Carbon capture and storage (CCS): A Critical Review

The single most important action required to deal with the cimate change phenomenon is to reduce CO2 omission from Coal as Climotoligist James Hanson(2008) claimed. CCS is a low carbon technology to capture,transport and store emitted unnecessary CO2 from coal plants so that CO2 shall not subsidise to anthropogenic climate change. CO2 could be sited in geological storage, Ocean storage and mineral storage. Geological storage is broadly recognised as the best viable option (Leung et al., 2014). In geological storage process, the CO2 is injected in the ground above the critical temperature and pressure. In Ocean storage process, concentrated CO2 is dissolved in sea water and then neutralise the carbonic acid with the formation of Calcium bi-carbonate. In mineral Storage process, the CO2 is stored in the solid alkaline form after reacted with metals oxide to form bicarbonate and it is more permanent solution than others (Jurg and Peter, 2009). KPMG (2012) reported that CO2 is now an overbearing burden of the industry, shrinking an organisation's portfolio by $212,000 for each thousand metric tons production. Researchers are considering CCS as one of the prospective way of mitigating the effect of CO2 emission (Bert et al., 2005).According to IEA, CCS can decrease CO2 emissions overall by 20 percent, and also can decrease the cost for fighting climate change by 70 percent. The IPCC (2007) reported that the world require negative CO2 emissions to maintain the present CO2 levels of 392 ppm. Some of the models assume that as much as 90% of the reduction would be achieved by CCS (IPCC, 2005). Read and Lermit (2005) claimed that large scale use of Bioenergy with CCS (BECCS) over next 50 years can bring atmospheric carbon levels to preindustrial levels. According to IEAGHG, BECCS have the potential to make negative emissions up to 10Bn tons of CO2 each year (Smolker and Almuth, 2012). The application of CCS in greater prospect depends on many factors such as technical evolvement, cost, potentiality, regulation matter etc.

Carbonates in several forms denote a vital carbon storage, accounting for around 40 percent of the overall CO2 in the world (Zhu and Dittrich, 2016). Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3) is one of the by-product of CCS (Goldthorpe, 2017). CaCO3 has been commercialized in several sectors, and still poses a huge potential in numerous sectors. It is required for the growth of marine organisms. It was found in the research that addition of 2mM bicarbonate in the sea water can double the growth of skeleton of coral (Francesca and Brenda, 1999). So, calcium carbonate stored by the Ocean storage method has a good potential to contribute to enhance the health of the ocean. Due to cost effectiveness, CaCO3 becomes a pivotal filler for plastic, rubber, and paper (Sarayu et al., 2014) and impeccable substance for fluorescent particles in stationary ink. Moreover, the ejection of heavy metals such as copper, chromium, etc. from mining & metal industries has become source of serious contamination in soil and groundwater (Zhu and Dittrich, 2016). Traditional technique for remediation of contaminated sites are either exceedingly expensive or uneffective (Ahluwalia and Goyal, 2007). CaCO3-based technique provides an effective and inexpensive solution (Phillips et al., 2013). For example, CaCO3 with bacteria eliminates copper by 97 percent with a primary Cu concentration of 1 g/L (Achal et al., 2011).It also has been found that there is shortage of CO2 at many fertiliser plants which they are usually managing from ammonia production plant (Simon and Preeti, 2008). In UAE, Fertilizer Company named FERTIL with the association with Mitsubishi recover CO2 from Natural gas fired boiler and steam reformer flue gas, compressed & utilized for fertilizer production at Ruwais Fertilizer Industries plant. It reduces CO2 emissions by 100k tons and which is around 20% drop in CO2 emission of the company (Iijima et al, 2010). CO2 can be used in the older oilfields to recover oil which is often recovered using more traditional methods and the CO2 will not be returned to the atmosphere (Mathiassen, 2003).CCS CO2 can be converted to hydrocarbon to use as fuel or in the plastic industry (Edward et al., 2012).

Presence of sulphurs and other chemical in CO2 might intensify corrosion of pipeline & well materials and consequently may cause the leakage of the pipeline. There is many other harmful wastage associated with CCS process for which Project manager need proper planning and management same as Nuclear power plant according to the some Environmental activist (Simon, 2012).Permanent storage arrangements is also another major drawback for CCS projects. There is concern that permanent storage of CO2 in CCS process is not fully safe; there is chance of leakage and even small scale leakage could make big threat. It has been found form the record that a leakage of CCS CO2   in Cameroon’s Lake Nyos suffocated 1,700 human being. Ocean storage also has a risk of acidification (Wikipedia,2019). Acidification make the present oxygen-poor survival conditions more worsening (Melzner et al., 2013). Ocean acidification could increase the toxic algal blooms (Endres et al., 2013) which can harvest algal toxins. (Anderson et al., 2008). Brevetoxins is one of the algal toxins that killed 34 endangered Florida manatees in 2002, and 107 bottlenose dolphins in Florida panhandle in 2004 (Flewelling et al., 2005). Brevetoxins may also harm humans who consume polluted shellfish (Flewelling et al., 2005).Overall, acidification can distress the regular growth and development of organisms and will cause habitat loss, fish mortality, nutrient cycling, carbon cycling, ecosystem functioning, diversity and with possible changes of species composition in the bentho–pelagic communities (Mostafa et al., 2016).

CCS requires additional energy for carbon capturing process, carbon compression process and for power requirement of necessary equipment which ultimately decrease the plant efficiency (Edward et al., 2012). The additional energy requirement is around 25% to 37 %( Page et al., 2009) which has a direct impact on the cost. The cost of CCS project can be different according to the source of the CO2 to be captured, the distance to the storing place and the conditions of the storing place. The cost of capturing the carbon dioxide is typically the greatest cost of a CCS project. Economically viable CCS projects are possible if CO2 is already divided as part of a prevailing industrial system (CCSA, 2019).The IEA reports that the additional cost including transportation range from $4 to $12/ton, subject to methodology used for injection and storage location (Adams & Davison, 2007). A Case study of CCS project in Latrobe Valley in Victoria, Australia shows that capital cost of the electricity plant increase by $800-$1450/KW due to addition of CCS facility (Kolstad and Young, 2010). So, Project Managers need to exercise the in depth cost benefit analysis.

There are 18 CCS facilities in commercial operation worldwide (Global CCS Institute, 2018). Quest is the first commercial application of CCS in Canada which is the largest CCS project and formed by Shell, Chevron and Canada Energy. It has the capacity of 1Mn tons of CO2 annually. NRG energy is also developing another CCS project in Texas which will have capacity of 1.5Mn CO2 annually (Hower, 2016). IEA reported that to achieve Paris aims of 2˚C by 2060, 14% of overall emission cutbacks should be by CCS. But there are not enough CCS facility in supply. The target require around 2,500 CCS facilities with capacity of 1.5Mn tons every year in operation by 2040(Global CCS Institute, 2018).There are many organizations around the globe, are working to improvise the process. Global Thermostat utilize unused process heat to grasp carbon pollution from power plants. This process can eliminate 5lb of CO2 per kWh of electricity where power plants emit 2lb of CO2 per kWh of electricity (Rickels, 2018). CO2 Solutions use natural enzyme carbonic anhydrase as a catalyst to quickly, cheaply and efficiently absorb carbon with minimal energy use. Carbon Engineering is integrating an air contactor and a regeneration cycle for continuous capture of atmospheric CO2 and production of pure CO2 (Hower, 2016).