Reducing greenhouse gas emissions through carbon dioxide storage

Experience gained extracting fossil fuels is being directly applied to storing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in deep underground reservoirs.

• 30 September 2010 | Updated 29 November 2011

Overview

• Greenhouse gas emission and climate change 
• Carbon dioxide geological storage 
• Research and development
• Collaboration

Greenhouse gas emission and climate change

Global warming, largely caused by increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, is a modern challenge.

While various actions can be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the size of the problem is so large that a mix of approaches is necessary.

These include:

• energy conservation
• increased levels of efficiency
• increased use of renewables
• the capture and underground storage of carbon dioxide (CO2)
• social behaviour changes.

Carbon dioxide geological storage

About half Australia's CO2 emissions come from stationary sources, mainly coal-fired power stations. CSIRO has established a post-combustion capture (PCC) research program to develop technologies to capture emissions from Australian brown and black coal power stations. These emissions could be stored deep underground in the pore spaces of rock formations for many thousands of years.

The types of geological rock formations being considered to store carbon dioxide are typically deeper than one kilometre underground and are similar to those in which naturally occurring CO2 accumulations, as well as oil and gas are sometimes found. 

Consequently, the knowledge and technologies that have been applied for decades in the petroleum industry can be applied to underground carbon dioxide storage.

In the conditions normally planned for geological storage of CO2, the CO2 exists in a supercritical fluid state. This means the density is like a liquid but the viscosity is like a gas. At a higher density, more CO2 can be stored in a given volume of rock.

Research and development

CSIRO is conducting research and development to develop safe and economical technologies for the geological storage of CO2.

CSIRO is active in these projects:

• developing and using computer models to predict the fate of injected CO2
• devising and applying methods to monitor the injected CO2 to ensure it remains safe and secure
• examining movement of groundwater in the vicinity of potential storage sites
• investigating storage in deep unminable coal seams as an alternative geological target
• adapting and developing atmospheric technologies to determine whether CO2 is leaking from stored locations underground.

Collaboration

CSIRO is a core research participant in the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC). CSIRO also collaborates with government, researchers at national and international universities and research organisations, and has strong links with industry.

CSIRO performs research in both CO2 capture and storage. This section describes CSIRO's work in CO2 storage.

For information on our carbon capture research, read about:

Post-combustion capture Scientists are developing and trialling carbon-capture technology used to capture the carbon dioxide produced by coal-fired power stations.