Strategic Carbon Dioxide Infrastructure to Achieve a Low-Carbon Power Sector in the Midwestern and South-Central United States.

Large-scale carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) requires development of critical infrastructure to connect capture locations to geological storage sites. Here, we investigate what government policies would be required to make the development of CO pipelines and large-scale CCUS in the power sector economically viable. We focus on the transition from conventional coal to non-CO-emitting natural gas-fired Allam-cycle power with CCUS and study a system in which 156 Allam-cycle power generators representing 100 GW of capacity send their captured CO emissions to three geological storage locations in the central United States through 7500 miles of new pipeline.

Infrastructure to enable deployment of carbon capture, utilization, and storage in the United States.

In February 2018, the United States enacted significant financial incentives for carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) that will make capture from the lowest-capture-cost sources economically viable. The largest existing low-capture-cost opportunity is from ethanol fermentation at biorefineries in the Midwest. An impediment to deployment of carbon capture at ethanol biorefineries is that most are not close to enhanced oil recovery (EOR) fields or other suitable geological formations in which the carbon dioxide could be stored.

Numerical Modeling of Gas and Water Flow in Shale Gas Formations with a Focus on the Fate of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid.

Hydraulic fracturing in shale gas formations involves the injection of large volumes of aqueous fluid deep underground. Only a small proportion of the injected water volume is typically recovered, raising concerns that the remaining water may migrate upward and potentially contaminate groundwater aquifers. We implement a numerical model of two-phase water and gas flow in a shale gas formation to test the hypothesis that the remaining water is imbibed into the shale rock by capillary forces and retained there indefinitely.

A Model To Estimate Carbon Dioxide Injectivity and Storage Capacity for Geological Sequestration in Shale Gas Wells.

Recent studies suggest the possibility of CO2 sequestration in depleted shale gas formations, motivated by large storage capacity estimates in these formations. Questions remain regarding the dynamic response and practicality of injection of large amounts of CO2 into shale gas wells. A two-component (CO2 and CH4) model of gas flow in a shale gas formation including adsorption effects provides the basis to investigate the dynamics of CO2 injection.