Three Sequestration Methods--Illustration by Anthony Mancino, LANL
Getting the Carbon Out
June / July 2006
Volume 4 Number 3
Carbon-based fossil fuels, which account for about 65 percent of electricity production and about 86 percent of global energy consumption, drive the world's economy. With large global reserves, favorable economics, and an extensive technology and infrastructure base, these fuels are projected to play a central role in energy production for at least the next few decades. The Energy Information Administration's Annual Energy Outlook 2006 projects continual growth in fossil fuel consumption through 2030.
After 100 years of petroleum-based transportation and 120 years of turning coal into electricity, fossil fuel technology is mature. Technological advances over the past century have improved efficiency and lessened environmental impacts, but we now face the convergence of several challenges that demand radically new technologies.
As population and economies around the world grow, projected increases in energy demand are staggering. Global energy consumption grew by 137 quadrillion BTUs between 1983 and 2002 and is expected to increase by another 233 quadrillion BTUs between 2002 and 2025. This dramatic increase poses challenges that science and technology can help meet.
First, the limited supply of conventional oil and gas and the desire for energy independence have led to a reconsideration of unconventional fossil fuel resources, such as oil sands and shales, but these will require new extraction technologies.
Second, technologies that increase efficiency in fossil fuel use, such as superconductivity and fuel decarbonization with concurrent hydrogen production can help extend supplies.
And third, the potential impact of human activity on climate has led to global interest in capturing and storing, or "sequestering," carbon dioxide so it does not enter the atmosphere.
The task of capturing and storing CO2 is particularly formidable given the scale at which humans currently produce it—€”over 25 billion metric tons per year globally. To develop a suite of land-based options, spanning from terrestrial sequestration to geologic storage to innovative concepts like CO2 mineralization, Los Alamos National Laboratory is applying some of its core scientific capabilities, such as:
—€ Materials science, especially gas separations and the behavior of geomaterials, like cement, under extreme conditions.
—€ Scientific prediction and modeling, essential ingredients in so many of the laboratory's projects, are being directly applied to the carbon challenge through CO2-PENS (Predicting Engineered Natural Systems), a conceptual framework that has now become a working computer model. CO2-PENS combines theory, experiment, observation and computation to predict the response of earth materials to the dynamic coupling of fluid flow, chemical reaction and mechanical response.
—€ Advanced sensors, monitoring approaches and analytical methods to characterize and understand the complexities and processes in both terrestrial and geologic systems.
—€ Risk analysis and safeguards, which are being applied to CO2-PENS to provide a comprehensive risk assessment of geologic CO2 storage.
With a significant institutional investment, Los Alamos has developed a broad base of research associated with the fate of CO2 in geologic systems. This base now spans from experimental work on the behavior of supercritical CO2 and subsequent geochemical reactions to advanced computational efforts to field observations. Los Alamos and its partners (including Sandia National Laboratories) conducted the first U.S. field test of geologic CO2 storage at Hobbs, N.M. The lab also partnered with Kinder Morgan CO2 to understand the long-term fate of wellbore cement—€”a potential weak spot in engineered geologic systems.
While the focus here is on carbon sequestration, the work is part of a larger effort to address all parts of the carbon fuel cycle, including fuel extraction and use. Los Alamos's experience in fossil fuel extraction has grown over 25 years from early work in oil-shale utilization and reservoir modeling to more recent work in advanced seismic imaging and new monitoring and sensing approaches, such as the lab's recent success with INFICOMM, a technology initially developed for covert communications that is now used by Chevron to retrieve data from deep oil and gas wells.
Los Alamos is now using this experience to help an industrial partner develop innovative solutions to oil shale extraction. To find more efficient and less polluting ways to use fossil fuels, it has done extensive research and development in fuel cells and hydrogen storage, which are integral to fuel decarbonization.
In addition, Los Alamos is a leader in the development of superconducting materials, which will significantly increase the efficiency of the electricity distribution infrastructure. Advanced, clean methods of producing power from hydrocarbon fossil fuels require separation of the energy carrier (hydrogen) from the carbon by-products. The lab is working on a number of innovative separation approaches, ranging from polymer membranes that are stable at high temperatures to the formation of tailored clathrates/hydrates.
While the ultimate goal may be to replace fossil fuels, no competing alternative is ready to take over their huge share of the global energy market. To sustain a high standard of living and extend that same standard to developing countries, the nation must use every scientific means at its disposal to mitigate the environmental effects of fossil fuel use over the coming decades.
George Guthrie is a Los Alamos scientist with the Earth and Environmental Science Division. This article was published originally in Los Alamos Energy Security. http://energysecurity.lanl.gov.
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