DOE to award nearly $30 million to three Carbon Storage Feasibility projects

As part of the second phase of the cost-shared research and development opportunity known as the Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is splitting $29.6 million between three newly selected projects.

Specifically, the DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy selected the projects to determine the feasibility of commercial-scale storage complexes in holding millions of metric tons of carbon. The Office of Fossil Energy funds R&D projects to promote sustainable efforts among fossil resources and cut down on the cost of advanced fossil energy technologies. In this case, they’re searching out a means of safe, cost-effective and permanent geologic storage for carbon dioxide to coincide with the predicted use of transformative carbon capture technologies beginning around 2025.

This marks the second phase of an effort which has already seen approximately $15.4 million distributed among 13 projects to study these complexes’ pre-feasibility. The latest round will be managed by the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), though, and include projects run by the Battelle Memorial Institute, the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois and the University of Wyoming.

The Battelle effort will stack Paleozoic storage complexes in southwest Nebraska and Kansas and utilize existing technology for carbon dioxide capture and transport from ethanol. The Illinois effort turns to a commercial scale geological storage complex that will collect carbon dioxide as a byproduct of ammonia production. Lastly, the Wyoming project will determine the feasibility of a commercial-scale geological storage complex near the Basin Electric Power Corporation’s Dry Fork Power Station.