carbon capture and storage

carbon capture and storage (CCS), the process of recovering carbon dioxide from the fossil-fuel emissions produced by industrial facilities and power plants and moving it to locations where it can be kept from entering the atmosphere in order to mitigate global warming. Carbon capture and storage is a three-stage process—capture, transport, and storage—designed to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) released into Earth’s atmosphere by separating it from emissions before it can be discharged. Captured CO₂ is compressed before it is transported. A similar process called carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) converts some of the captured carbon into concrete, carbonate rock, plastics, and biofuels before storing the rest.

CO₂ is a chemical compound that is formed from the combustion of petroleum, natural gas, coal, biomass, and other carbon-containing materials. CO₂ is also a by-product of fermentation and animal respiration, and it is used by plants in photosynthesis to make carbohydrates. CO₂ is recovered for numerous diverse industrial applications from flue gases, limekilns (a furnace for reducing limestone or shells to lime), and other sources. The buildup of CO₂ in Earth’s atmosphere contributes to global warming and the resulting changes in climate. Roughly one-third to one-half of the CO₂ released into the atmosphere by human activities is absorbed by Earth’s oceans, a process that has resulted in the oceans’ steady acidification.

Carbon dioxide capture

The main pathways used to extract and recover CO₂ from a facility’s emissions are post-combustion, pre-combustion, oxyfuel combustion, and direct air capture. Post-combustion capture uses solvents (such as monoethanolamine, ammonia, and potash) to separate CO₂ from flue gas after the fuel is burned. To do this, the facility’s combustion process is retrofitted with pollution-control equipment that removes CO₂ selectively through absorption using amine-based solvents, adsorption (in which gas molecules are pulled toward the surfaces with which they are in contact), chilling, distillation, or passage of the gas through membranes. The gas is then heated in recovery columns to separate the solvent from the CO₂, and the CO₂ is compressed to a liquid state where it can be transported. The advantages of post-combustion technology include the ability to add scrubbers, piping, and other infrastructure to existing power plants and that it is a fairly reliable technology, with some techniques having been developed before World War II. Conversely, post-combustion carbon capture is more costly, requiring sizable investments in equipment and chemical solvents. In addition, untreated flue gas often has relatively low concentrations of CO₂, which range from 4 percent in gas-fired power plants up to about 14 percent in coal-fired plants, so the removal of relatively small amounts of carbon using this process is expensive.

Pre-combustion capture involves removing CO₂ from a fuel, such as coal or natural gas, before the combustion is complete. The coal undergoes a process called gasification, which partly oxidizes the fuel in steam and a mixture of oxygen and air under high pressure to form a synthesis gas, or syngas, which is primarily made up of methane, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen. On its own, syngas can be used to make liquid fuels, burned to produce electricity, or used to power the process of plasma arc gasification. With additional processing, however, syngas can yield a mixture rich in CO₂ and hydrogen gas (H₂). Compared with post-combustion capture, pre-combustion carbon capture is more efficient since the gas feedstock has a higher CO₂ concentration (often between 15 and 50 percent), and it can produce usable by-products, such as hydrogen. While coal-fired power plants and industrial facilities may be retrofitted with equipment that allows for pre-combustion carbon capture, installing gasification infrastructure is often more expensive than the initial construction cost of a new coal-fired power plant.

Oxyfuel combustion capture burns the fuel in an environment of nearly pure oxygen instead of ambient air (which is largely made up of nitrogen), which limits the waste by-products to CO₂ and water vapour. One advantage of this process is that CO₂ is much easier to separate from emissions since the mixture undergoes a dehydration process, and no solvents are needed. As much as 100 percent of the CO₂ released by burning the fuel can be captured, and equipment can be fitted onto existing facilities. To achieve this level of efficiency, however, costs related to both specialized equipment and materials are relatively high, along with the high energy demands associated with the separation of oxygen from other gases in the air and high combustion temperatures that range from 1,650 to 2,480 °C (3,000 to 4,500 °F).

Direct air capture (DAC) is a process that extracts CO₂ from the atmosphere directly, often well after combustion has taken place. In this process, air is passed over streams or surfaces of liquid solvents (such as potassium hydroxide, which attaches to CO₂ molecules) or solid sorbents (such as amine-based solids and specialized resins) using wind turbines to funnel air into air contactors (or scrubbing towers), where these chemicals reside. Here, the CO₂ is separated from the air’s other components. As in the post-combustion carbon capture process, heat is applied to release CO₂ from these materials so that it can form carbonate salt pellets and other precipitates or be compressed for transport. Similarly, “artificial trees”—that is, sticky, resin-covered filters—are designed to remove CO₂ passively from ambient rather than forced air; in this process, CO₂ is converted into soda ash, which is washed off with water and collected for storage. Although artificial trees are smaller and remove less CO₂ than larger scrubbing towers, they may become attractive alternatives to large-scale scrubbing-tower-style air contactors since they are less energy intensive, less noisy, and far cheaper to manufacture and install than large DAC facilities. While scrubbing-tower-style air contactors can be scaled to fit existing power plants, large-scale DAC plants are often standalone facilities that are expensive to build. As of 2023 fewer than 20 large-scale DAC plants had been constructed in the world.

Transport

Captured CO₂ is transported from plants to storage sites across a network of pipes, with the smaller pipelines leading away from individual facilities to connect with a larger shared pipeline. The United States, Canada, Great Britain, and parts of Europe all have extensive pipeline networks, some of which date to the 1970s; in the United States and Canada alone, pipes carry more than 30 million tonnes (about 33 million tons) of CO₂ per year. However, since the captured CO₂ is transported under high pressure and often forms acids in the presence of moisture, pipe networks are not immune from leaks or explosions.

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Storage

Captured CO₂ needs to be stored in locations where the gas can be isolated from the atmosphere. As a result, geologic formations, deep ocean sites, salt-lined aquifers, and emptied oil and gas reservoirs deep (at least 1 km [0.6 miles]) underground are viewed as attractive locations. Such geologic formations include porous sedimentary rock strata into which pressurized CO₂ can be injected; as the CO₂ seeps out through pores in the rock, it dissolves in groundwater to form carbonate minerals. Similar deep ocean geologic formations, aided by high ocean pressures and low temperatures, can also hold large quantities of CO₂. Depleted oil and gas reservoirs provide ready-made storage areas for holding CO₂ over the long term, provided that they can be sealed by layers of rock free from faults that could release the gas to the atmosphere.

Scaling challenges

The Global CCS Institute’s 2019 Status Report noted that some 40 million tonnes (about 44 million tons) of CO₂ are captured and stored annually. A similar assessment by the International Energy Agency in 2021 noted that this figure had risen to 44 million tonnes (48.5 million tons) when CCUS was considered. Climate experts claim, however, that approximately 9.1 billion tonnes (10 billion tons, or 11 gigatons) of CO₂ must be removed from the atmosphere annually to maintain a long-term average global temperature rise of no more than 1.5 °C (2.7 °F).

CCS is in its infancy. The costs of CO₂ capture, transport, and storage are high, and paying for the massive amounts of infrastructure needed will require government and private investment, along with a greater willingness by the public to pay higher prices for the energy resources they currently receive.