From PNNL: “Carbon dioxide reveals a predilection for tumbling alone and lining up together”

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Carbon Dioxide emissions are very important, so this research is very important.

December 2012
Suraiya Farukhi
Christine Sharp

“Results: Crowded together on a titanium dioxide surface, carbon dioxide molecules relinquish their free-tumbling ways to form crooked lines and cling to molecules in nearby lines, according to scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Bringing together a trio of instruments and a supercomputer, the team joined experiments and theory to understand carbon dioxide’s behavior.

‘We want to build our understanding from the ground up,’ said Dr. Zdenek Dohnalek, an experimental chemist on the study. ‘We want to understand the interaction of carbon dioxide with well-known models of oxides, such as titanium dioxide.’

Carbon dioxide diffuses on titanium rows by a tumbling mechanism. Once bound to a titanium atom, the carbon dioxide’s axis tilts. No image credit.

Why It Matters: Understanding how carbon dioxide molecules behave is basic science needed by the energy sector to facilitate carbon sequestration and fuel production. Sequestration stores carbon dioxide emissions from power plants underground. Fuel production uses the carbon dioxide as a building block to create fuels.

‘While titanium dioxide is a model material that will likely not be used to sequester carbon dioxide or serve as a catalyst for fuel conversion, the fundamental aspects of carbon dioxide reactivity revealed in our study are very intriguing,’ said Dr. Xiao Lin, a Linus Pauling Postdoctoral Fellow at PNNL, who proposed this research as part of his fellowship.”

See the full article here.

“Located in Richland, Washington, PNNL is one among ten U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories managed by DOE’s Office of Science. Our research strengthens the U.S. foundation for innovation, and we help find solutions for not only DOE, but for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the National Nuclear Security Administration, other government agencies, universities and industry.”

ScienceSprings is powered by MAINGEAR computers

From Berkeley Lab: “Depleted Gas Reservoirs Can Double as Geologic Carbon Storage Sites”

Berkeley Lab

Berkeley Lab scientists help verify science behind geologic carbon sequestration

Dan Krotz
JANUARY 05, 2012

“A demonstration project on the southeastern tip of Australia has helped to verify that depleted natural gas reservoirs can be repurposed for geologic carbon sequestration, which is a climate change mitigation strategy that involves pumping CO2 deep underground for permanent storage.

The project, which includes scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), also demonstrated that depleted gas fields have enough CO2 storage capacity to make a significant contribution to reducing global emissions.

Aerial view of the Otway Project in Australia (Image: CO2CRC).

During an 18-month span beginning in April 2008, an international team of researchers injected 65,000 tonnes of CO2-rich gas two kilometers underground into a depleted gas field in western Victoria, Australia. That’s about 130 tonnes of CO2 per day, or the amount emitted by a small, 10-megawatt power plant. It’s also the daily CO2 emissions required to supply 6000 average U.S. homes with electricity.

Geological cross-section of the Otway Project. CO2-rich gas is extracted from the Buttress well (on the left), injected into the depleted gas field using CRC-1, and the Naylor-1 well houses the monitoring equipment installed by Berkeley Lab scientists. Faults are black lines.

‘There was no discernible leakage. The CO2 stayed within the reservoir and behaved as expected,’ says Barry Freifeld, a mechanical engineer in Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division who helped set up and interpret the site’s well-based monitoring equipment.”

See the full article here. There is a whole lot more in this article than I could possibly include.

A US Department of Energy National Laboratory Operated by the University of California

From DOE Pulse: “Initiative aims to speed carbon capture technology”

January 2, 2012
Submitted by DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory

“The Carbon Capture Simulation Initiative (CCSI) is a partnership among five DOE national laboratories (NETL, Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Pacific Northwest), industry, and various academic institutions that are working together to develop state-of-the-art computational modeling and simulation tools to accelerate the commercialization of carbon capture technologies from discovery to development, demonstration, and ultimately, widespread deployment at hundreds of power plants. CCSI is part of DOE/NETL’s comprehensive carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) research program, part of the President’s plan to overcome barriers to the widespread, cost-effective deployment of CCS within 10 years.”

See the full post here.

From PNNL Lab: “What Are Those Molecules Doing?”

New technology enables molecular-level insight into carbon sequestration

“Results: Scientists decoding the reactions that occur during geologic carbon sequestration were severely hampered by the tools available. Now, thanks to a team at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, scientists can examine molecular interactions at the high pressures and temperatures expected in deep geologic reservoirs. They created a device, known as High-pressure Magic Angle Spinning Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (MAS NMR), that provides detailed information on the reactions happening between minerals and carbon dioxide.

‘The early work with this new tool is promising,’ said Dr. Kevin Rosso, a PNNL geochemist on the study. “This unique capability brings the detailed probing power of solid-state NMR to the table for understanding mineral transformations in pressurized carbon dioxide in situ.’

Why It Matters: Sequestering carbon-based emissions, especially from coal-fired power plants, is vital to managing climate change, which affects cities and crops. For widespread carbon sequestration adoption, complex questions about the permanence of proposed underground reservoirs must be answered. These questions include the prospect of reactions between minerals and carbon-dioxide-rich fluids affecting caprock’s sealing integrity. The new MAS NMR capability will aid in fundamentally studying these reactions, ultimately so that scientists can inform industry and policymakers on site selection and other decisions.”

Thanks to a team at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, scientists can examine molecular interactions at the high pressures and temperatures expected in deep geologic reservoirs.

See the full article here.

From NETL: “Materials for Oxy-fuel Combustion”

LabNotes – May 2011

Materials for Oxy-fuel Combustion

“Materials research is underway at NETL to enable the development of advanced combustion technologies that can capture at least 90% of a power plant’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions with less than a 35% increase in the cost of electricity. Oxy-fuel combustion is a new technology that is based on burning fossil fuels in a mixture of recirculated flue gas and oxygen, rather than in air. An optimized oxy-combustion power plant will have ultra-low emissions since the flue gas that results from oxy-fuel combustion is almost all CO2 and water vapor.”

A representative pc boiler refitted for oxy-firing. The materials performance research areas at NETL are circled. Note the two different options for CO2 circulation back into the boiler to maintain heat transfer characteristics similar to air-firing.

There is a lot more to this story. See the full article here.

From Berkeley Labs: “A Clearer Picture of Carbon Sequestration”

Simulations Shed Light on Fate of Sequestered CO2

Margie Wylie
January 31, 2010

“Despite progress in clean energy, Americans will continue to rely on fossil fuels for years to come. In fact, coal-, oil- and natural gas-fired power plants will generate 69 percent of U.S. electricity as late as 2035, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Such sobering projections have sparked a wide range of proposals for keeping the resulting carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere where it traps heat and contributes to global warming. Berkeley Lab scientists are using computer simulations to evaluate one promising idea: Pump it into salt-water reservoirs deep underground…

Geologic sequestration in saline aquifers (3) is shown in this illustration alongside other geologic sequestration ideas. Courtesy of Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC)

“Underground, or geologic, carbon sequestration ‘…will be key tool in reducing atmospheric CO2,’ says George Pau, a Luis W. Alvarez Postdoctoral Fellow with Berkeley Lab’s Center for Computational Sciences and Engineering (CCSE). ‘By providing better characterizations of the processes involved, we can more accurately predict the performance of carbon sequestration projects, including the storage capacity and long-term security of a potential site.’ ”

This is a very important topic. There is a great deal of valuable data in this article. Read the full article here.