Producing CO2 for Markets

Sleipner heralded what can be called the third phase of

carbon capture, the primary purpose of which is climate
change mitigation. The first phase started back in the
1930s, with the invention of the amine process, to remove
unwanted CO
2 from gas streams. A second phase emerged
in the 1970s, when carbon capture became an economic
source of CO
2 for utilization. This second phase was critical in building up both knowledge and infrastructure to
enable phase three. One such contribution was the development of technology to capture CO 2 from the
flue gases
of power plants or other combustion sources.
Small Scale Capture from Flue Gases
As discussed in chapter 4, CO2 is expensive to transport
in small quantities. This explains why, in areas far from
existing sources of commercial CO2 but where a market
need exists, capturing CO2 from flue gases became a viable
option. Because the concentration of CO2 in flue gases is
dilute, the production cost was higher than most of the
traditional sources used to produce it for commercial markets. However, for projects needing a significant
amount
of CO
2 not located near a commercial source, it became
economic because of the savings in transport costs. As
discussed in chapter 3, the first of these facilities was at
Searles Valley Minerals, which is still in operation today.
100 CHAPTER 5
In the early 1980s, three carbon capture plants, ranging in size from 100 to 1,200 tCO 2/day, were built in
Texas
and New Mexico to produce CO2 for enhanced oil recovery
(EOR). The Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 and subsequent oil
shocks had sent oil prices soaring and amplified the pressure to increase the production of domestic oil.
The high
oil price made capturing CO2 from flue gases economical for EOR applications. The economics shifted
again
in 1986 when the oil price collapsed, forcing all three
plants to close.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, about a dozen more
plants capturing CO2 from flue gas were built around the
world, including the United States, Australia, Japan, Brazil, China, and India. These plants are relatively
small,
generally 100–300 tCO2/day, and produce CO2 primarily
for the food and beverage market or for urea production. 3
Large-Scale Capture for EOR
As discussed in chapter 4, the use of CO2 for EOR started in
1972, with natural reservoirs providing most of the CO2.
Over the years, carbon capture augmented this supply, as
shown in table 4. Most of the activity was in the United
States, but in recent years projects have spread to other
countries, specifically Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and China.
There are some common aspects to the ten projects listed in table 4. The CO
2 comes from one of three
sources: natural gas processing, fertilizer production, or
CARBON CAPTURE IN ACTION 101
coal gasification. Because a carbon capture step is necessary in these industrial processes, they bear the
cost of
capture. In all of them, carbon capture is relatively inexpensive, because the CO 2 is captured from a high-
pressure
stream. The incremental cost to make the CO
2 available
for EOR is simply due to the expenses of compression
and transport. In most of these projects, the price paid for
the CO
2 by the EOR operators covers these incremental
costs.
Table 4 Carbon Capture Projects for EOR
Project Location Capacity
(Mt/year)
CO
2 Source Year of
Operation
Enid Oklahoma US 0.7 Fertilizer 1982
Shute Creek Wyoming US 7.0 NG Processing 1986
Val Verde Texas US 1.3 NG Processing 1998
Weyburn US/Canada 3.0 Coal Gasification 2000
Century Texas US 8.4 NG Processing 2010
Coffeyville Kansas US 0.8 Fertilizer 2013
Lost Cabin Wyoming US 0.9 NG Processing 2013
Lula Brazil 0.7 NG Processing 2013
Uthmaniyah Saudi Arabia 0.8 NG Processing 2015
Yanchang China 0.44 Coal Gasification Projected 2018
Source: GCCSI, The Global Status of CCS, Vol. 2: Projects, Policy and Markets
(Melbourne: Global CCS Institute, 2015), 56–59.
102 CHAPTER 5
The motivation for most of these projects is the
desire to use CO
2 for EOR. The auxiliary benefits for
CCS, such as building pipeline infrastructure and storing CO 2, were generally not the driving force. The
one big
exception is the Weyburn project that came on-line in
2000.
The Great Plains Synfuels Plant near Beulah, North
Dakota, is the only surviving project from the synfuel programs of the 1970s. Those programs were
instituted in
response to the spike in oil prices caused by the Arab Oil
Embargo. The purpose was to use the vast coal resources
of the United States by converting the coal to oil and gas;
the Beulah plant, specifically, converted coal to a substitute natural gas. A by-product was a high-purity
stream of
CO
2, which was simply vented to the atmosphere for many
years. The Weyburn project, which stores approximately
3 million tonnes of CO
2 each year, involved building a 330
km pipeline from Beulah to the Weyburn and Midale oil
fields in Saskatchewan, Canada. Unlike most EOR projects, which only want to maximize oil production,
Weyburn also took into consideration how to maximize CO
2
storage; in addition, it undertook an extensive scientific
program studying the measurement, monitoring, and
verification of CO
2 in the subsurface.4 Of all the largescale carbon capture EOR projects, Weyburn has made the
most significant contributions to the furthering of CCS
technology.