A team of researchers from the University of Oklahoma’s Mewbourne College of Earth and Energy and Los Alamos National Laboratory, along with industry partners, have received an $18.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy . to investigate commercial carbon dioxide storage (CO2) in the underground.
The project, Oklahoma Carbon Hub, will investigate three different sites in Osage and Kay counties as potential sites for the injection of about 54 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over 20 years. For reference, the average car in the United States produces one metric ton of CO2 over a three-month period.
«We are increasingly emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If we could capture that carbon dioxide in certain point sources, we could use these types of facilities to store it long term. “With this grant and the subsurface expertise of Mewbourne College of Earth and Energy, the OU will be able to play a direct role in reducing CO2 emissions into the atmosphere,” said Dr Matthew Pranter, Head of the OU School of Geosciences. and holder of the Eberly Family Chair, principal investigator of the grant.
“We are trying to contribute to the global problem of climate change and mitigate or reduce the amount of CO2 that reaches the atmosphere.”
There are already three committed customers (CO2 sources) if storage solutions are considered viable. The CVR fertilizer plant near Coffeyville, KS, the Azure sustainable aviation fuel production facility near Cherryvale, KS, and the Heimdal direct air capture units on Oklahoma’s Osage Reservation will store CO2 emissions through the Hub.
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Underground geological storage is an option for storing CO2 after it has been captured or removed from the atmosphere. Pranter says this is a potentially favorable option because the oil and natural gas found deep beneath the surface has been trapped there for millions of years and has not migrated to the surface.
For these potential reservoirs, it is important to characterize and quantify the spatial distribution of pore space and subsurface minerals and determine optimal locations for drilling injection wells. A vital part of this process will be drilling holes to obtain cores several hundred meters thick, allowing researchers to directly observe the rock itself. The target rock layer is the Arbuckle Group, a primarily limestone and dolomite formation.
According to Pranter, the Arbuckle Group in the study area has high porosity, and the rock formations located above it have low porosity and permeability and would act as a seal to keep the CO2 stored in the Arbuckle Group.
Underground geological storage is an option for storing CO2 after it has been captured or removed from the atmosphere.
“We know that the rock formations are such that they act as natural storage tanks in the subsoil,” he said. According to Pranter, certain types of rocks react chemically with CO2, transforming it over time into a mineral.
While this is not necessarily the case for The Oklahoma Carbon Hub sites, it is possible.
The Center is part of the US Department of Energy’s CarbonSAFE (Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise) initiative and a $518 million effort by the DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management to fund a third round of projects focused on the characterization and authorization of carbon storage sites. The Oklahoma Carbon Hub will become the first DOE-granted CarbonSAFE program in the state of Oklahoma.
“This project involves detailed characterization of the subsurface to the point where we can advance the preparation and submission of permit applications for wells that could be used to inject long-term CO2 for permanent storage in the subsurface,” Pranter stated.
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