A Review of CO2 Storage in View of Safety and Cost-Effectiveness

Abstract

The emissions of greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have been identified as the main contributor for global warming and climate change. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is considered to be the most promising strategy to mitigate the anthropogenic CO2 emissions. This review aims to provide the latest developments of CO2 storage from the perspective of improving safety and economics. The mechanisms and strategies of CO2 storage, focusing on their characteristics and current status, are discussed firstly. In the second section, the strategies for assessing and ensuring the security of CO2 storage operations, including the risks assessment approach and monitoring technology associated with CO2 storage, are outlined. In addition, the engineering methods to accelerate CO2 dissolution and mineral carbonation for fixing the mobile CO2 are also compared within the second section. The third part focuses on the strategies for improving economics of CO2 storage operations, namely enhanced industrial production with CO2 storage to generate additional profit, and co-injection of CO2 with impurities to reduce the cost. Moreover, the role of multiple CCS technologies and their distribution on the mitigation of CO2 emissions in the future are summarized. This review demonstrates that CO2 storage in depleted oil and gas reservoirs could play an important role in reducing CO2 emission in the near future and CO2 storage in saline aquifers may make the biggest contribution due to its huge storage capacity. Comparing the various available strategies, CO2-enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR) operations are supposed to play the most important role for CO2 mitigation in the next few years, followed by CO2-enhanced gas recovery (CO2-EGR). The direct mineralization of flue gas by coal fly ash and the pH swing mineralization would be the most promising technology for the mineral sequestration of CO2. Furthermore, by accelerating the deployment of CCS projects on large scale, the government can also play its role in reducing the CO2 emissions.

Active Nanointerfaces Based on Enzyme Carbonic Anhydrase and Metal–Organic Framework for Carbon Dioxide Reduction

“…Herein, the feeding gas contained a mixture of 5% CO 2 and 95% N 2 , with a controlled constant flow rate of 10 mL/min. This gas balance was chosen to mimic conditions in which the target molecule, i.e., CO 2 , corresponds to physical scenarios that are representative of current challenges in gas separation technologies [ 55 , 56 ], with carbon capture and storage (CCS) processes [ 55 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 ], for instance, targeting uptake of CO 2 at dilute concentrations in power plants and chemical refineries [ 56 , 58 , 63 , 64 , 65 ]. The self-made membrane module also comprised a gas chamber for gas flow and liquid chamber for removing any product being released.…”

Stable Carbon Isotopes of Phytoplankton as a Tool to Monitor Anthropogenic CO2 Submarine Leakages

“…For the future applications of this method, transient leakages characterised by different δ 13 C of injected CO 2(g) should be explored, both by culture and release field experiments, and a multispecies approach should also be tested to consider the interspecific variability of carbon isotopic fractionation. As already highlighted in other studies (e.g., [5,10,21,22]), it is critical to extensively define the natural baseline at the storage site from both a geochemical and biological perspective. The seasonal changes that naturally characterise phytoplankton and DIC isotopic composition [32,33] and seabed community cycles [10] should be deeply understood to allow the correct identification of leakages and not misinterpret the observed deviations.…”

Molecular dynamics simulations of a hydrophilic MIL-160-based membrane demonstrate pressure-dependent selective uptake of industrially relevant greenhouse gases

“…The societal need for efficient, scalable gas separation processes has become of great significance following the enactment of international agreements that aim simultaneously to decelerate anthropogenic emissions and to implement an increased share of sustainably designed energy technologies [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] . The separation of acid gases carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and hydrogen sulfide (H 2 S) from natural gas resources, for instance, is an important precursor to the improved economics of such processes for both producing methane (CH 4 ) and synthesizing commodity chemicals 9,10 respectively.…”

“…Lastly, post combustion separation of CO 2 from dilute low flow rate stream aids in the industrialization and efficiency of chemical processes with specific trade-offs in capture rates 12 . Whereas the storage and transportation of CO 2 are facilitated by relatively mature, affordable technologies [13][14][15] , CO 2 capture-including its separation from other gasescontinues to prove challenging and comprises nearly 66% of the total costs associated with carbon capture and storage (CCS) processes [5][6][7][16][17][18][19] .…”