Slide Show: What Does Carbon Capture and Storage Look Like?
From the North Sea to Texas, this slide show looks at existing technology to take the carbon dioxide out of coal burning and other fossil fuel use
Slide Show: What Does Carbon Capture and Storage Look Like?
- INDUSTRIAL CCS: Carbon capture and storage technology could also be applied to other large industrial sources of carbon dioxide: cement- and steelmaking, or aluminum smelting. StatoilHydro plans to build a test facility at its Mongstad refinery in Norway to examine how CCS might be applied to other industries. Harald M. Valderhaug / StatoilHydro
- POWER PLANT: Duke Energy is building a new power plant in Edwardsport, Ind., that will gasify coal before burning, so-called integrated gasification combined cycle technology or IGCC. When coal is gasified in this way, carbon dioxide can be stripped out during the gasification process. Duke is studying the feasibility of capturing 18 percent of the CO2 that would be produced by the $2.35 billion facility, one of many commercial projects underway in the U.S. Tom Wolfe / Duke Energy
- CO2 PIPELINE: There are already some 3,100 miles (4,988 kilometers) of pressurized pipelines, like the one pictured here, transporting carbon dioxide from naturally occurring deposits in Colorado, for example, to depleted oil fields in west Texas. The 320-mile (515 km) Green Pipeline under construction will connect petroleum reservoirs south of Houston with a variety of natural and manmade sources of CO2 in Louisiana and Texas. The CO2 can then be used to scour more oil out of the field. Courtesy of Denbury Resources, Inc
- WELLHEAD: All that marks the surface above a pilot carbon dioxide storage facility south of Dayton, Tex., is a wellhead. Even when geologists attempted to pump the CO2 back out of the ground using natural-gas techniques, it was impossible to extract it. Courtesy of Susan Hovorka, University of Texas at Austin
- CO2 POOL: The liquefied carbon dioxide has slowly spread through the Utsira sandstone formation in the Sleipner natural gas field and has stayed in place over the past 13 years. More than 10 million metric tons of CO2 are now stored in the rocks rather than vented into the atmosphere, slowly spreading to cover 1.15 square miles (three square kilometers) as more CO2 is pumped down as pictured here via seismic imaging. Courtesy of StatoilHydro
- CO2 STORAGE: Captured carbon dioxide can be pumped deep underground for permanent storage, as has been done with CO2 extracted from natural gas at the Sleipner field in the North Sea. The artist's rendering here depicts the extraction well for the natural gas as well as the injection pipe for CO2. Alligator film / BUG / StatoilHydro
- CAPTURED CO2: By simply condensing the water vapor, nearly pure carbon dioxide can be captured. It is then compressed and stored in the big tanks pictured here, being lifted into place in September 2007. At full capacity, the oxyfuel boiler produces—and captures—nine metric tons of CO2 every hour. Courtesy of Vattenfall
- CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE: The new boiler at the Schwarze Pumpe power plant in Spremberg, Germany, captures 95 percent of the carbon dioxide (CO2) from its coal burning—a small demonstration of one option for capturing carbon and compressing it for transportation by pipeline or truck to a place where it can be buried or used. This photo was taken in October 2007 and shows the general layout of the carbon capture and storage addition to the 1,600 megawatt power plant. Courtesy of Vattenfall
