(106g) Development of an integrated carbon capture, separation and geologic storage pilot: A technical research project of the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership

The Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (SECARB) is one of seven regional carbon sequestration partnerships established in the United States of America, in cooperation with the United States Department of Energy (DOE). SECARB represents 11 southeastern states and is comprised of more than 100 research partners and participants. Managed by the Southern States Energy Board, the SECARB program is funded through DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory and cost-sharing by field teams, host site companies/landowners and industry partners.

There are more than 900 large, stationary sources of CO2 in the SECARB geographical region that contribute 31 percent of the Nation's CO2 stationary source emissions. Approximately 40 percent of these sources are co-located with a suitable geologic storage formation. The southeastern United States is rich in storage resources, with a total of more than 2,367,215 million metric tons in oil and gas reservoirs, coal and shale basins and deep saline formations. Results from SECARB's field testing indicates that numerous thick, regionally extensive, high porosity saline formations with excellent thick shale confining zones exist within the region that could potentially store 50 percent of the CO2 produced in the SECARB region during the next 100 years.

This paper will focus on the role of the regional partnerships in conducting integrated field tests and highlight the robust suite of field tests being implemented during Phase II and Phase III of the program across the Southeast. These field tests support the development of an integrated carbon capture, separation and geologic storage pilot, known as the ?Anthropogenic Test,? during which CO2 will be captured at a stationary source and injected into a suitable deep saline formation, the lower Tuscaloosa Formation.

The SECARB team, led by the Electric Power Research Institute and Southern Company, conducted a Phase II Saline Reservoir Field Test at Mississippi Power Company's (a subsidiary of Southern Company) Plant Victor J. Daniel, a power generation facility capable of delivering over 1,000 megawatts of coal-fired electricity into the Jackson County power grid. The field test was conducted from October 2-28, 2008, with a total of 3,027 tons of natural CO2 injected. The project was a success, with the lower Tuscaloosa reservoir demonstrating excellent injectivity as evidenced by an average wellhead pressure of 1,100 pound per square inch during the injection of 180 tons of CO2 per day (about 3 MMcfd). Post-injection plume monitoring tools, vertical seismic profile and a neutron log, were deployed in December, and the results will be assessed during early 2009. This data is of paramount importance to the design and implementation of the Anthropogenic Test.

The SECARB Phase III development project consists of two related field demonstrations; an ?Early Test? that utilizes pipeline CO2 and the ?Anthropogenic Test? that will use coal-fired power plant CO2. In addition to field test at Plant Daniel, the reservoir properties of the lower Tuscaloosa are being studied in the SECARB Phase II Stacked Storage project led by The Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) at the University of Texas at Austin. This small-volume injection field test currently is underway at the Cranfield Oilfield, located near Natchez, Mississippi. The Phase III Early Test will expand the Detailed Area of Study of the current Cranfield test and take advantage of ongoing CO2-enhanced oil recovery (EOR) efforts by the field operator, Denbury Resources, International, during 2009 and 2010. This presents SECARB with the opportunity to monitor the large-volume injection of approximately 1.5 million tonnes of CO2, injected over a 1.5-year period, in the down dip water leg of the oil reservoir in order to test commercial and experimental monitoring, verification and accounting (MVA) protocols. Both field tests at Cranfield will provide important data in preparation for the Anthropogenic Test.

The Anthropogenic Test's research and development objectives will be to: 1) further test the lessons learned at the Plant Daniel and Cranfield field tests, with respect to CO2 storage, flow and immobilization mechanisms; 2) evaluate injection and storage conditions at a third geographic point in the same, or a similar, regionally extensive saline reservoir to help establish ultimate CO2 storage capacity; 3) evaluate how best to integrate and minimize the impacts of CO2 captured from a power plant on the operation of transportation infrastructure and long-term storage formations; 4) understand how the reservoir architecture (the interplay between the reservoir flow units, seals and baffles) can be used to optimize storage and to minimize the areal extent of the plume; and 5) evaluate the impact of captured CO2 from power plants on the geochemistry of the saline water in the lower Tuscaloosa Formation.

The Anthropogenic Test site design, for this development stage experiment, will be linked to the daily rate of delivered CO2 produced by a capture-separation system applied to a slip stream of stack gases from the operating coal-fired power plant. The capture-separation technology was selected in late 2008, and its design and fabrication will occur in 2009 and 2010 respectively, with start of injection slated for 2011. SECARB plans to inject CO2 for four years, followed by two or more years of post-injection monitoring. Capture volumes are anticipated to range from 100,000 to 250,000 tonnes per year. Based upon injection rates that have been recorded in the Phase II small-volume field tests, it is anticipated that one injection well will be sufficient to handle these daily volumes.

The CO2 from the capture facility is anticipated to be at injection pressure and will be transported through well site metering equipment to confirm the rate, pressure and temperature of the CO2. A deep, subsurface monitoring well will be constructed similarly to the injection well. However, the monitoring well will include additional in-well monitoring equipment, such as pressure, temperature and possible geochemistry probes.

SECARB is planning an extensive monitoring, verification and accounting program for its field activities. Each site will be well instrumented with multiple sensor arrays. Standard off-the-shelf technologies will be tested in carbon sequestration applications. In addition, novel new tools and techniques will be tested and evaluated. SECARB has proposed an extensive program to monitor performance during the 10-year Phase III project. In addition, the two industry partners who are hosting the injection tests have an interest in supporting MVA activities for extended periods.