3D PRINTING
Project title
Maximizing carbon sequestration in cement-based constructions through material innovation and additive manufacturing
Project coordinator
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
Project leader
Souradeep Gupta
Partners
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
Indian Institute of Science, Roorkee, India
Sandia National Laboratories, USA
Oregon State University, USA
Project period
May 2023 – April 2026
Website
not available yet
Summary
Portland cement manufacturing has significant impacts on climate change impacts, arising from CO2 emissions from the calcination of limestone (CaCO3 → CaO + CO2). Demand for cement is expected to increase in the next few decades due to rapid urbanization. Reducing the embodied carbon of cement-based construction materials is thus critical to achieving decarbonization targets set by the Paris agreement. A high-impact but currently underdeveloped technology in the cement and concrete domain is CO2 mineralization utilizing CO2-rich industrial flue gas that could be provided from co-located processing facilities. The minerals formed during carbon curing (CaCO3 for cementitious materials) are atmospherically stable and can permanently store CO2. Furthermore, these minerals are micro-crystals, which densify the pore structure and improve durability for ideal process conditions and material compositions. This result can be achieved through accelerated carbon curing of building components, which can occur either at the manufacturing facility or during transportation. However, there are challenges with current carbon curing techniques that must be addressed to upscale this technology. First, (i) cementitious building materials manufactured using the molding process limit the diffusion of CO2 to near-surface layers due to disconnected pore structure with an increase in hydration. This process limits the total amount of CO2 that can be sequestered. Second, (ii) flue gas from industrial sources, including coal-fired power plants, lime, and cement manufacturing, contain water vapor, particulate matter, sulfur oxide (SOx), and nitrous oxide (NOx) along with CO2. Contaminants from these mixed gas streams may significantly affect the CO2 uptake and durability of CO2 mineralized concrete products through selective absorption or secondary reactions. From these two challenges, it is necessary to address the following research question to accelerate the adoption of this technology: How should the material properties and process conditions be controlled to maximize CO2 sequestration?
The proposed project aims to adopt 3D printing technology to overcome the challenge of maximizing CO2 diffusion into the structure and optimizing material chemistry to maximize carbon sequestration without affecting the strength and durability of the concrete. The overall objectives of the proposed project are as follows:
1. Determine critical chemical (e.g., flu gas chemistry, cement mineralogical composition) and physical (particle size distribution) factors that drive CO2 sequestration in 3D printed cementitious blends.
2. Develop novel cementitious mixtures with locally sourced materials for maximizing CO2 sequestration.
3. Determine optimum geometry of 3D printed building components such as hollow wall systems for enhanced sequestration of CO2.
4. Prototyping and test-bedding of full-scale 3D printed hollow walls after carbon sequestration.
The project will leverage a multi-disciplinary team with backgrounds in cement chemistry, alternative cement additives, supplemental materials, and 3D printing/additive manufacturing as well as existing characterization, curing, printing, and testing facility to execute the proposed work. USA (Sandia National Laboratories, SNL and Oregon State University, OSU) and Indian teams (Indian Institute of Science, IISc Bangalore and Indian Institute of Technology, IIT Roorkee) will be joined by two industrial partners Graymont (USA) and Verdant Building Alternative (VBA) (India).
The expertise and resources in this project can help develop a pragmatic technology for optimized carbon sequestration, even in complex flue gas streams and building materials.
AMIGO
Project title
AMIGO
Project coordinator
Repsol Oil and Gas Canada Inc
Project leader
Riley Gordon
Partners
Repsol Oil and Gas Canada Inc
University of Alberta, Canada
National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), USA
Project period
April 2023 – April 2025
Website
not available yet
Summary
Repsol Oil and Gas Canada Inc (Repsol), the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and University of Alberta (UAlberta) will prove the technical feasibility and assess potential leakage risk for CO2 geologic storage in an onshore, pressure-depleted gas reservoir. The candidate reservoir, located near Edson, Alberta in Canada is operated by Repsol and is being considered for development of an onshore carbon capture and storage (CCS) Hub project called Amigo. Through the two-year ACT4 project duration, a CO2 injection program will be developed for this depleted gas reservoir utilizing state-of-art and novel technical workflows.
Canada has plans to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 that includes reducing emissions by 40-45% from 2005 levels by 2030 and achieving a net-zero electricity supply by 2035. Through federal enabling policies, the country has highlighted the importance of building carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) projects to reduce CO2 emissions from the power and industrial sectors. These policies closely resemble the prevailing policies in the United States. The province of Alberta alone accounts for about 40% of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions, while simultaneously being a global leader in the growing CCUS industry with a long history of small-scale pilot to operating commercial scale projects. However, these large-scale projects, like other countries, are not injecting into depleted gas reservoirs for CO2 sequestration. In May 2022, the Alberta Energy Regulator issued draft Directive 065 that introduced the concept of utilizing depleted reservoirs as a resource for CO2 storage. Abundant production, pressure, and reservoir data for these types of reservoirs substantially reduces subsurface uncertainty, as compared to saline aquifer storage, significantly and substantially lowering several technical hurdles associated with storage site development. Amigo will be the first-of-its-kind project for the province and will serve to guide provincial, federal, and international regulators in the development of new and updated regulations for safe and effective storage in depleted gas reservoirs. A key element of this is the development of an MMV program specifically focused on storage in depleted gas reservoirs through the operational phases to closure and post-closure stages of the project.
The Amigo project will evaluate technical and regulatory aspects of large-scale CO2 storage in a pressure-depleted gas carbonate reservoir operated by Repsol that has decreased an order of magnitude in pressure after several decades of producing several trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas. Five tasks will be performed during this two-year project to successfully achieve key milestones and deliverables: (1) project management, (2) technical feasibility, (3) project risk analysis, (4) project development plan, and (5) public outreach. NETL will assist the project with technical characterizations from experience working with near-development scale projects in the United States, such as the United States Department of Energy (US-DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) CarbonSAFE projects, and risk analyses. Those projects provided valuable insight and experience through the NETL-led National Risk Assessment Partnership (NRAP). The University of Alberta brings the expertise garnered from over 20 years of experience in CCS starting from the IEAGHG Weyburn Storage and Monitoring Project through to its current involvement in Aquistore, the storage component of SaskPower’s Boundary Dam CO2 Capture Project. In addition to our well-rounded project team, another critical component included in the tasks will be to share knowledge and lessons learned with local communities, stakeholders, and regulators to provide the proper analysis and potential for utilizing depleted reservoirs as an alternative storage site for a CCS Hub.
The Amigo Project Team is designed to leverage complementary technical expertise and capability to successfully execute the project plan to develop workflows that will enable and accelerate the CCS industry.
MACE
Project title
Direct Carbon Conversion to Chemically Enhance Supplementary Cementitious Materials for Building Construction
Project coordinator
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), USA
Project leader
Ana Aday
Partners
NREL, USA
Carbon Upcycling Technologies, Canada
Project period
June 2023 – May 2025
Website
Summary
Industrial processes to manufacture building construction materials (e.g., steel, plastics, cement/concrete) are responsible for significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The production of cement alone emits 2.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, accounting for ~8% of human-caused GHG emissions. Clinker substitution (aka ordinary portland cement replacement) and carbon capture, utilization, and storage have been identified as the two biggest technology opportunities to decarbonize the cement industry. Additional benefits of clinker substitution can include increased strength, improved sulfate resistance, decreased permeability, reduced water ratio requirement, and improved concrete workability and pumpability. However, current supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) used for clinker/cement substitution are available in limited supply in North America, with supply expected to dwindle further as it is tied to declining high-emissions industries such as the coal industry and blast furnace steel plants – forcing producers to increasingly rely on imported SCMs to meet market demand.
To address this need for new, local, and readily-available SCMs to enter the market, a trans-national consortium was created between Carbon Upcycling Technologies, a Canadian carbon utilization company and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), which is funded by the US Department of Energy. In this project, NREL and Carbon Upcycling are partnering to develop and demonstrate a framework to assess various SCMs available in North America, including biomass-derived SCMs and byproduct SCMs from high-emitting industries such as steel and mining for their suitability as SCMs.
Carbon Upcycling Technologies has developed a proprietary Mechanically Assisted Chemical Exfoliation (MACE) process that can take a variety of feedstocks and high or low purity CO₂ (from direct air capture or point sources) as inputs to provide enhanced carbonated SCMs for use in concrete, thereby improving strength and increasing alkali-silica and sulfate resistance of the resulting concrete. The activities undertaken in this project will help the consortium members evaluate the suitability of these SCMs as inputs in the MACE process, and develop ideal processing conditions for CO₂ enhancement of these SCMs.
MeDORA
Project title
Membrane-assisted Dissolved Oxygen Removal from Amine solution for CO2 capture
Project coordinator
SINTEF, Norway
Project leader
Luca Ansaloni
Partners
SINTEF, Norway
NTNU, Norway
Aker Carbon Capture, Norway
RWE, Germany
TNO, the Netherlands
HVO, the Netherlands
Project period
September 2023 – 2026
Website
Summary
The deployment of post combustion CO2 capture (PCCC) technology is deemed vital to keep the increase in global average temperature below 2°C. PCCC is currently the only technology operational at full-industrial scale (e.g. Boundary Dam power plant in Canada and AVR WtE plant in The Netherlands), but reduction in costs and increased stability of operation are required to accelerate its deployment. Without a proper solvent management strategy in place, the costs associated with solvent make-up and waste disposal may represent a major contribution to the OPEX of PCCC plants: Boundary Dam reported $27 million operational and amine management costs in 2018[1], equivalent to $45/tCO2 (in the absence of a reclaimer). Amine (MEA) losses between 0.3 and 3 kg per ton of CO2 captured have been reported in pilot campaigns. Oxidative degradation, responsible for ca. 70% of total amine losses[2], leads to decreased solvent lifetime, and increase formation of harmful by-products, corrosion and volatile emissions. Cost-efficient solutions to mitigate solvent degradation will accelerate large scale implementation of CCS.
Within ALIGN-CCUS (funded by ACT1), TNO has developed and patented[3] the Dissolved Oxygen Removal Apparatus (DORA): a membrane contactor used to remove dissolved O2 from the amine-based solvent, limiting degradation and prolonging solvent lifetime. The DORA concept is designed to be solvent independent and has been tested with MEA, CESAR1 and MDEA/PZ. Using MDEA/PZ, the concept was brought to TRL7 in a 3-month pilot campaign at the HVC waste incinerator in The Netherlands. MeDORA will advance the DORA technology, bringing it to TRL8 by demonstrating stable long-term operations at HVC (Waste-to-Energy using MDEA/PZ for up to 2 years) and RWE (power plant in Niederaussem using CESAR1 for 1.5 year). With 2 solvents, 2 industrial flue gases, and more than 20,000 hours of operation, the operational robustness of DORA will be demonstrated. The project aims at demonstrating sustained 90% oxygen removal, resulting in major benefits in terms of solvent management OPEX (up to 70% reduction) and environmental impact of the capture plant (less waste generation, reduced emissions) due to increased lifetime of the solvent. Moreover, the oxygen removal will lead to higher purity of the CO2 product out of the stripper. This will be systematically tested varying the O2 content in the flue gas (solvent: MEA) in the SINTEF pilot facility at Tiller. MeDORA aims at obtaining less than 10ppmv of O2 in the CO2, which complies directly with strict geological storage specifications (e.g., Northern Lights, NO[4]).
MeDORA is executed by a strong industry-based consortium covering the entire value chain. End-usersRWE (DE, lignite-fired power generation, sewage-sludge-to-energy plants) and HVC (NL, WtE plant) have a strong commitment towards CCUS. Both companies are already involved in testing DORA and will apply the MeDORA technology in their CCUS pilot plants. ACC (NO) is positioned as one of the main amine-based CO2 capture technology providers, currently building 2 PCCC plants (WtE in NL and cement in NO) and also offering CO2 capture as a service (end-user). The company participates in the MeDORA project by contributing to the techno-economic assessment (TEA) and has a major role in the exploitation activities as a possible first licensee of DORA. The research partners in the project are SINTEF (coordinator, NO), TNO (inventor of DORA3, NL) and NTNU (research infrastructure, NO) and they all have a long tradition in developing CCUS technologies, in particular amine- and membrane-based processes. The large industrial involvement and the high levels of expertise of the research partners ensure the ambition and commitment of the MeDORA consortium to prepare the technology for commercialization in 2026, strengthening the competitiveness of the companies involved in deploying CCUS technologies to the market. For that end, the MeDORA campaigns will run on commercially available membrane technologies(porous and asymmetric).
[1] D. Baxter, “Carbon capture operation and maintenance costs grow by nearly $15M in four years,” Global News, 2018.
[2] H. Liu & G. Rochelle, Oxidative degradation of amine solvents for CO2 capture, Master Thesis UT Austin (2015)
[3] A. Huizinga, E. L. V. Goetheer, J. G. M.-S. Monteiro, P. M. Khakharia, and M. Mohana, US 20210008465A1, 2019.
[4] Northern Lights Project Concept report RE-PM673-00001
PERBAS
Project title
Permanent sequestration of gigatons of CO2 in continental margin basalt deposits
Project coordinator
GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany
Project leader
Jörg Bialas
Partners
GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany
TEEC GmbH, Germany
National Geophysical Research Institute, India
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Bhopal, India
Institute for Energy Technology (IFE), Norway
Volcanic Basin Energy Research AS, Norway
Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory (LBNL), USA
Colorado School of Mines, USA
Project period
June 2023 – May 2026
Website
Summary
The EU Climate Action aims at Europe’s economy becoming climate neutral by 2050. Even the most ambitious transformation scenarios lead to a situation in which some CO2 has to be captured and stored in the subsurface (CCS) as some branches of the economy will continue to produce some CO2. Current storage capacities of 40 Mt/year likely need to be upscaled to 20 Gt/year. CO2 injected into the subsurface must be stored without potential leakage for several thousand years to make economic and climatologic sense and to comply with regulations. In conventional CCS (producing or relinquished gas and oil fields or saline aquifers) the injected CO2 remains mobile for decades and is therefore susceptible to tectonic or manmade violation of the retaining geological formation potentially leading to leakage. CO2 storage in basalt complexes offers an alternative solution. Test sites like Carbfix (Iceland) and Wallula (USA) have confirmed that the injected CO2 will react with water and the volcanic host rock almost immediately. This mineralization results in permanent storage of CO2 within the reservoir rock’s pore space. Carbfix tests have shown that more than 90% of injected CO2 was converted to minerals within two years. Conventional CCS, especially next to settlements and freshwater reservoirs face public acceptance issues and usage conflicts and there are no large onshore basalt provinces close to the main CO2 sources. Offshore basalt complexes on the other hand are estimated to provide 40 Tt of volume for carbon storage worldwide. Offshore CCS in basalt complexes provide a compelling alternative for permanent CO2 storage.
The technology readiness level (TRL) for some of the technologies necessary for offshore basalt storage is presently too low to enable industrial scale development. PERBAS aims at providing detailed solutions for reservoir selection, CO2 transport, injection and monitoring in order to pave the way towards commercialization of CO2 storage in offshore basalt complexes. PERBAS will investigate the feasibility of supercritical CO2 injection, using water in the pore space, in order to avoid the requirement to inject 20 t of water for 1 t of CO2. This would have the additional advantage that supercritical CO2 would be associated with a free gas which allows the application of geophysical remote sensing for monitoring thereby reducing the number of monitoring wells required. Selection, description and operation of basalt reservoirs capable of storing large amounts of CO2 requires the adaptation of modelling and processing software to handle corresponding data sets economically. PERBAS will develop new 3D modelling approaches to describe volcanic facies with all (physical, chemical, structural) parameters. Rock physics models will be used to perform experiments to investigate mineral dissolution, precipitation and flow rates to deduce digital formulation for property dependencies. This will inform model building and inversion codes on the characteristics of potential volcanic facies. Synthetic data computation will be based on these relations and direct the interpretation and automated identification of potential volcanic facies in exemplary data bases from the NW European and Indian margin. New tracers will be developed for monitoring the degree of mineralization of injected supercritical CO2. Geophysical remote sensing will reduce the number of monitoring wells and bring down costs for CO2 storage in basalts. Joined seismic and electromagnetic surveys provide independent physical parameters, which will be jointly inverted (JI) to resolve the internal structure of the basalt reservoirs. Synthetic data from the improved volcanic earth model and parameter relationship from rock physics will be evaluated in target oriented FWI and JI. Reconstruction of synthetic models and analyses of dedicated HR field data from mid-Norway and India will inform on resolution limits of geophysical remote sensing during operation of a supercritical CO2 storage site. Various scenarios of CO2 pipeline transport and related challenges will be addressed.
Examples for the classification of volcanic facies will provide guidance for selecting the best offshore CO2 storage sites in basalt provinces. Recommendations based on a summary of the investigations will result in a best practice guide for site appraisal through to injection and monitoring strategies. PERBAS will raise the TRL for the crucial technological gaps that presently prevent the adaptation of CCS in basalt formations.
SPARSE
Project title
Sparse Passive-Active Reservoir monitoring using Seismic, Electromagnetics, gravity, and surface deformation
Project coordinator
SINTEF, Norway
Project leader
Peder Eliasson
Partners
SINTEF, Norway
Horisont Energi, Norway
Neptune Energy, Norway
Quad Geometrics, Norway
Carbon Management Canada (CMC)
University of Calgary, Canada
3P Technology Corp, Canada
Q-Eye Labs, Canada
GeoSoftware, Canada
Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory (LBNL), USA
Spotlight, France
Precision Impulse, UK
Project period
July 2023 – March 2026
Website
Summary
If it can be accomplished on a large enough scale (gigatonnes), Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is becoming accepted as a critical method for reducing global CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. CCS directives in Europe and North America require a detailed measurement, monitoring and verification (MMV) plan for the injection site both during the operational phase (during injection) and for decades after injection has stopped (post closure). This is required so that regulators (and the public) can be assured that the stored CO2 is completely and permanently contained. The operator must be able to document long-term conformance of predicted and observed behaviour of the injected CO2, show evidence that no leakage is detectable, and document that the storage site is evolving towards a situation of long-term stability. A major challenge for accelerating large-scale CCS is that the costs associated with conventional large-scale long-term geophysical monitoring are high. Potential solutions for large-scale CO2 storage were also addressed during the recent 2022 SEG workshop "Toward Gigatonnes CO2 Storage — Grand Geophysical Challenge", where long-term low-cost monitoring and sparse multi-physics autonomous acquisition and interpretation were ranked #1 and #3 among 55 CCS hot topics.
The "Sparse long-term, low-cost monitoring: Passive-Active Reservoir monitoring using Seismic, Electromagnetics, gravity, and surface deformation" (SPARSE) responds to these challenges. In a strong partnership with industry, this research project aims to develop and establish sparse nodes as a tool for site-specific, low-cost, long-term conformance and containment monitoring. We achieve this by exploiting sparse but highly repeatable geophysical data from strategically and sparsely distributed sea bottom or land surface nodes. A SPARSE system serves as background monitoring to establish containment and conformance with predicted behaviour and can trigger target-oriented active seismic surveys if/when needed. This will reduce the number of conventional large-scale 3D seismic surveys needed during the operational phase considerably, and it may remove the need for planned 3D seismic surveys in the post-injection phase altogether.
The aim of SPARSE is to develop (including recommendations for implementation and application) a low-cost monitoring system to assure containment and conformance, consisting of node-based multi-physics geophysical monitoring and automatic conformance evaluation. Through full integration and optimization of all components during the design process we aim to ensure reliable conformance monitoring, practical technical solutions, and low cost for installation, operation, and maintenance. The industrial partners in SPARSE (operators and vendors) will be instrumental in securing the relevance and applicability of the sparse monitoring tools and methodologies developed in the project and will bring their operational experience and perspective.
