PUMPING CO2 INTO THE GROUND

thanks jim, some in-field calcs help in the reality checks
ive always wondered, when petrolrum is batch delivered, are there any markers between the batches or is there a distinct interface?

The cO2 that is recoverable is primarily the half that IS only from point source production.The experiments that are planned, are only for feasibility, and will be conducted to determine a number of the variables like leakance, dispersion , adsorption, methane production, silicate production and pressure head declines

~I should have started over instead of that over long post. My words are between 2 of these symbols ~. (~The next sentence is a paste from Fisherman~) Silicate production and pressure head declines (~The next is my comment~) ~Carbon dioxide and what kind of rock makes silicates? Did you perhaps meen carbonates? I agree, a million PSI for a week to get a ton of carbon dioxide into the rock will be too costly and too slow. Could it be that bad? Neil~

Farmerman - the exact specifics of batching different grades through a pipeline is a little out of my experience. I'm just guessing now, but I'd say that for crude oil you probably just stop pumping grade "A" at 1200 hours, and start pumping grade "B". There would be an interface (mixing between the two grades) for 100 to 200 feet of the pipeline, but you'd never see it after it's in a 200,000 bbl tank.

If it is important to have a distinct cut off between different grades, there is a way to do it. You run a pig (a hard rubber cylinder) through the line between the grades. There would only be extremely small contamination then. I've only seen this done when I worked at a rail road tank car loading facility - we were putting different grades of lube oil blend stocks into 20,000 gallon cars, and didn't want any contamination between grades.

You can't run a pig through just any pipe. The pipe had to be specially designed to be able to. The elbows (45 or 90 degree bends in the pipe) have to be long-radius - you can't have thermowells sticking into the pipe, etc. But in addition to separating oil grades in pipelines, pigs are also used to remove sludge, water and other deposits, and there are "intelligent pigs" with instrumentation built in to gauge the condition of the pipeline. I doubt if many major crude oil lines aren't designed to allow pigs to be run.

neil, no i did mean silicates. The idea, at high PT silicate minerals act just like solubles. so a carbonate is adsorbed and, via ion exchange, a small ionic radius silicate is released as a sol;id sol.ution. Ca/Mg/K silicates can mix as solids and vary in concentrations of alkalis so that the resultant (wet) feldspars are formed as clay minerals.
As far as the energy needs to do this, remember the feasibility studies in science are to answer many of these questions. They will make up a detailed list of questions they want answered and conduct the research on a bench, then a 'pilot scale" and only during the pilot scale will they get a hint of the answers. especially those on life cycle costs and overall economics.

Jim-wow thanks, I always wondered how such interfaces were maintained. im familiar with sludge and pigs in gas trans lines. mostly from the days when pCBs were used as compressor fluids, so the dump pits at transmission booster stations all had heavy PCB contamination. I was helping some consulting companies do ground water modelling on pCB migration once they were reamed out of the pipelines.
We have a gasoline company here in Pa called MERIT. the story always was that they only bought the interface gasoline as various brands and blends were pumped through the same gasoline pipeline

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030609-104541-1090r.htm
staggering numbers in there - even for a bean counter

CO2 sequestration
I'd like to know if CO2 captured from natural sources is considered sequestration. I think that CO2 must be captured from anthropogenic sources like power plants, fertilizer industries etc....Many industries that utilize CO2 from natural sources for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) say they are sequestering CO2... Is it correct?

And then there is the thorny problem of cost assessment and payment assignments regarding the sequestration process. Who is to pay and at what point in the process? In the future should this payment be collected up front? Energy tax? How to structure such efforts?

JM

hode on!! Im only reporting on a series of proposed feasibility studies, not life cycle costs . in a sense , enhanced recovery by CO2 is a sort of sequestering , but Its not been optimized for CO2 capture and holding.
many formations that contain oil and gas are very fractured in shallow depths, so unless wells are properly cased and regrouted, maybe the wells will leak. Im not sure whether new tech for reaming and grouting of old wells is gonna do it.
Remember, the technique is trying to optimize the storage of CO2 so the wells will have to be optimized . I dont think theyre going to use old drillholes initially if they want to do a mass balance of the amount actually sequestered. Im not sure of the facts here so Im on shaky ground

I have been in denial regarding carbon dioxide causing our oceans to rise as no one has suggested an alternative at reasonable cost. Solid carbon dioxide, 2.5 Kilometers below the surface helps the cost a little, I think.
There are, I think, natural places where carbon dioxide issues from the ground at 1% or more mixed with other gases, mostly nitrogen and oxygen. These should be the site of the pilot programs. The mixture can be pumped to three kilometers or more where most of the carbon dioxide will be solid. Most every thing else will return to the surface where it can be re-injected if the residue still has more than 1/10% carbon dioxide and/or other green house gases.
The energy and cost required to compress a cubic kilometer of gas per year to high pressure will be considerable, but will be less than dealing with flue gases at perhaps 500 degrees c. If cooling and separation are necessary before pumping the cost may be prohibitive, even though some electricity can be made from ythe 500 degrees c flue gas. If the volume of natural carbon dioxide exceeds the volume of flue gases, mixing may cool the 500 degrees c flue gases sufficiently to be a safe input for the giant compressors.
Flue gases are normally cooled in a tall chimney, but it is, I think, impractical to install very large compressors at the top of tall chimneys, so the chimney will no longer be used, meaning the input air will need to be compressed and/or the flue gas compressors pull a vacuum. This may use all the electricity recovered from the 500 degrees c flue gases and from the gases further heated by compressing. If methane or other hydrocarbons are being burned, the flue gases will likely be less than 5% carbon dioxide, the rest being nitrogen, steam and perhaps 5% oxygen. Significant amounts of carbon monoxide are produced if we try to get the residual free oxygen in the flue gasses much below 5%.
We could make some cement and/or calcium oxide from calcium carbonate at the same site, disposing of the very hot carbon dioxide into the same compressors. Neil

If the subduction occurs at 4 cm per year that is 400 kilometers in 10 million years. By then most of the high level nuclear waste has decayed along with the daughters that are highly radioactive, plus the residue is diluted with large quantities of rock such that it would be only a bit more radio-active than average rock. It seems the probability is small of it reaching the surface in less than 400 kilometers or even 2000 kilometers. Aren't we being over cautious not dumping nuclear wastes in the subduction zones? On the positive side, the heating from our nuclear wastes may delay by a few days the end of plate tetonics, which will be a long term disaster for all life on this planet.

I think the plugging and abandonment of wells is pretty much a cut and dried operation, farmerman. Certainly, BLM, Colorado O&G Comission, and the NM OCD are not shy when it comes to offering firm suggestions, and I suspect that techniques designed to isolate hydrocarbon bearing formations would be adquate for CO2, especially considering it's greater density.

Part of theresearch is to look at the resultant chemistry of the sequestered gases and resulting minerals. By injecting into "bony " coal we can generate methane by kicking off the CH4 from the low grade coals that are presently left after mining. Also, if mines are deep enough, many of the "pillars' are left after retreating the mine and these can be reacted with the hot CO2.

flue gases can be cooled in single or combined cycles. In a single cycle, the gases can be compressed using a huge manifold. In a combined cycle, the gases are run through the burner twice and then quenched. this creates heated water problems. By stuffing the gas through the manifolds It can be compressed to cold or, in the case of coal mine mouth plants , the CO2 can be jetted into an abandoned mine area. The research is looking into
feasibility
safety
energy budgets
mostly the science and engineering not life cycle. This is like one big bench test and not really a pilot plant.

im not a fully convinced person when it comes to "man induced global warming"
As a geologist Ive seen too much evidence that shows our present warming cycle is still a function of a climate that demonstrates a worldwide
interglacial stage. We have ice cores that go back 800000 years that show climate changes well in excess of what we see now (based upon Oxygen isotope values -I recognize that such data can be in accurate , but Im still watching the climatologists to come up with some data that is more convincing than prsent models and statistical inference)

Hi Laara: Welcome to able2know.I see no logic in distinguishing between natural carbon dioxide and manmade or incidental sequestering and sequestering done at increadible cost; but I understand the Kyoto accord does distinguish for diabolical reasons.
I suspect that there are vast amounts of natural carbon dioxide that can be sequestered at lower cost than the industrally produced carbon dioxide. My guess is incidental carbon dioxide sequesturing is only about a millionth part of the planets carbon dioxide budget. Neil

roger, youve got it a bit wrong. If a well is grouted, fully grouted, then it cannot be used for pumping CO2 now can it?
Your faith inBLM et al, is , well, yours . I had the geophysics portion of an NUS( an old Halliburton division) contract in early to mid 90s redrilling and re-grouting observation wells that were leaking upwards due to salt pressures. the science aint exactly as cut and dried as you think.

Anyway, most all of the real well work is done not by agencies, the agencies contract a most all of the real hard technical work. I know very few agencies, other than the state geological surveys who even have techy staffs.

We could put a roof over on many existing buildings and most new buildings, with plants and shrubs which are outstanding at sequestering carbon dioxide. We could replace typical decorative plants with rapid sequestering varieties. The cost would be perhaps as high as sequestering fossil fuel carbon dioxide and the results short term if we allowed the dead plant material to decay so that it returned the carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Neil

neil, I dont argue with you. All Im doing is reporting the proposed research. The one thing we on a2k have to remember is that, since were not part of these projects, we dont really know their entire structures or what they will use as controls . However, as one whose done many a funded project, one thing we try not to do is predict outcomes or turns of data before we even start. That gets too close to religion.

Hi asli: welcome to able2know. The ocean bottom is almost always 4 degrees c = waters maximum density, so sequestering at the bottom is no problem, however I agree, warmer than 31 degrees c will be typical in deep dry caverns and some aquifers.
The critical pressure of carbon dioxide is 73.9 atmospheres, which is far more than soda cans and bottles can withstand. Since they typically do not explode until about 100 degree c, my guess is not much happens at 31 degrees c if lots of water is present. Perhaps an equilibrium is achieved between dissolved carbon dioxide that prevents the pressure from spiking at 31 degrees c. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable than I will respond.

Oh! I thought I was talking about sealing the well and reservoir after injection of CO2. Bet Jim knows more about this than I.

Hi farmerman: we really appreciate your expertise. If we seem to be arguing and trying to jump from research to pilot programs, just think of it as unskilled brainstorming.
If we are in a hurry, to get results, does it rarely work to begin several independent pilot programs while much of the research is incomplete, or pulling back to try something that might work when it is obvious we are on the wrong method? I agree that wastes lots of money, but sometimes we learn things that are useful in a different discipline and it helps train engineers.
I agree, we may get new ice age before green house warming causes much mischief, but I enjoy trying to figure solutions even to non-problems. Neil

For what it is worth, I too have my doubts as to man being the main cause of perceived global warming. As farmerman has stated there is much geological evidence pointing to past warming and cooling cycles without obvious human contributing factors. Personally I feel changes in the earth's orbit around the sun, being elliptical, combined with many other factors such as its wobble back and forth on an East/West access are quite significant. Obviously, one must seriously consider CO2's greenhouse effect, after all look at Venus. But then, it is about 42 million Kilometers closer to the Sun.

What makes the project currently under discussion intriguing is its potential ability to kill two birds with one stone.

JM