A TECHNICAL OVERVIEW OF CCS
"CCS involves capturing the CO2 produced at large industrial plants from the burning of fossil fuel (coal, oil and gas), transporting it to a suitable storage site and pumping it deep underground."
- The Global CCS Institute  |
CCS is recognized today by many established organ-izations in the international community (e.g. the IEA, the UN, the IPCC, the G8) as an important option for industries hoping to mitigate the adverse effects of their CO2 emissions. Although most of the technology required for building a CCS chain already exists, much of it having been used for decades in the oil and gas industry, considerable work and research is still needed in order to understand how it could be deployed at large scale. The various pieces of CCS technology that exist today, must now be adapted to industrial CO2 streams (power production, steel and cement manufacture, petrochemistry), and must be scaled up to where CCS can be used to effectively reduce a large part of man-made CO2 emissions globally.
| Furthermore, the CCS option must be continuously improved so that the technology can achieve the lowest possible carbon footprint and high energy efficiency at an acceptable cost to the industries it serves.
The technology in its classic form involves three steps so as to remove CO2 from industrial emissions and to inject and permanently store the unwanted gas within secure underground formations: capture, transport, and geological storage.
| Each of these components of the “CCS-chain” work has been summarized hereafter, but as the entire process is very technical and each project is adapted to particular setting, regulations, and economic drivers (local specifics), these basic overviews should not be understood as providing a complete picture. For more information, the Global CCS Institute has built a sizable electronic library on their website, which provides a wealth of knowledge about the various aspects of CCS and its deployment. The IEA-GHG has also developed numerous papers on the subject, many of which can be accessed here. Lastly, Geogreen worked with KAPSARC, the petroleum research institute for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to author a book detailing the technology from technical, political, economic, environmental, and financial perspectives. The book can be purchased online from CRC Press.
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