Something Green from the Cutting Room Floor

Often in researching an article I come across something very interesting that ultimately doesn't make it into print. Sometimes there simply isn't room. Other times it's too far off topic. Usually, it seems to be both, and this post is one example of that.

I recently wrote an article about carbon capture and sequestration research that is currently under way in Decatur, Ill. The reason it's being done there is because that's where Archer Daniels Midland has a major ethanol plant located above a potentially excellent long-term storage area for carbon dioxide, which is a by-product of ethanol production. It's a pretty cool demonstration project, which you can read about at www.enr.com/midwest, but here's a direct link to the article.

The thing that got squeezed out was an explanation of how the idea of carbon sequestration came about. Here it is:

Capturing CO₂ and storing it to prevent its acting as a greenhouse gas is not a new idea. In a 1977 research memorandum, Cesare Marchetti, then a senior scientist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, proposed the concept of capturing CO₂ emissions from power plants and disposing of the substance deep in the ocean. 

Although we now understand some of the major environmental drawbacks associated with ocean disposal, at least Marchetti raised the idea as a serious proposal.

Little was done on the subject in this country until the 1990s, when the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy began encouraging and supporting substantive research in this field. Contributing to the growing interest in the subject were organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (www.ippc.ch) which had developed hard numbers estimating the growth in CO₂ production worldwide – due almost entirely to the use of fossil fuels– and its potential consequences for altering the climate. Based on then-current scientific and socio-economic data, the organization’s Second Assessment Report: Climate Change 1995 singled out CO₂ as the most significant contributor to climate change.

TIME OUT: Here's where the research part got really cool. I came across the title of Marchetti's 1977 paper in a huge list of references in the Second Assessment Report. Googling the title led me to a copy that's available online as a scanned PDF document (link is in previous sentence).

What delighted me more than anything was that it is typewritten and just 13 pages, including maps and graphs. What a refreshing reminder of the good old days!You should look at it just to remind yourself that thought-provoking proposals don't have to have epic proportions. Now, where were we? Ah, yes...

Seven major energy companies including BP, Shell, Chevron and others from Europe and Scandinavia, joined forces in 2000 to form the CO₂ Capture Project (www.co2captureproject.org). Its goal has been to investigate how to best deal with CO₂ in the context of oil and gas related scenarios – oil refineries, heavy oil extraction and natural gas fired power generation – and specifically, how to capture it and then what to do with it. Now in its third phase, the project has fielded demonstration projects of several capture technologies and is investigating the impact of stream impurities on geological storage of CO₂.

To address the storage aspect of carbon capture and sequestration, the U.S. Department of Energy in 2003 awarded cooperative agreements to seven Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships (RCSPs). These public/private partnerships are charged with researching potential repositories and determining approaches and technologies for safe, permanent terrestrial and geologic carbon storage. The Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium, led by the Illinois State Geological Survey, in conjunction with the Indiana Geological Survey and the Kentucky Geological Survey, became the first of those partnerships to begin carbon storage from an industrial biofuel source when operational injection began in Decatur, Ill., on November 17, 2011. 

So now you know some of the background. One of the other things that didn't fit: a list of online resources for further information about the Decatur project. Here it is.

• Illinois Industrial Carbon Capture and Storage Project – NETL/DOE Fact Sheet (http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/factsheets/project/ARRA1547.pdf)
• Midwest Sequestration Geological Consortium (www.sequestration.org)
•  Illinois State Geological Survey (www.isgs.illinois.edu/)
•  Archer Daniels Midland Company (www.adm.com)
•  Schlumberger Carbon Services (www.slb.com/carbonservices)
•  Richland Community College (www.richland.edu)
•  Curious about what supercritical CO₂ looks like? http://blog.makezine.com/2011/09/06/what-supercritical-carbon-dioxide-looks-like/