Process aids CO2 storage predictability

The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) has crafted a new method designed to enhance efforts to predict carbon dioxide (CO2) storage potential in geologic formations.

NETL officials said CO2 Storage Prospective Resource Estimation Excel Analysis, or CO2-SCREEN, is designed to estimate underground storage potential for CO2 captured from fossil fuel burning power plants. Its goal is to provide a substantive, user-friendly, and consistent mechanism to calculate storage resources, giving decision-makers have enough information to reach crucial conclusions.

Researchers said CO2-SCREEN is composed of an Excel file used for data inputs and outputs, as well as a GoldSim Player file used to run Monte Carlo simulations. GoldSim is a flexible platform used to visualize and dynamically simulate complex systems in engineering and science that allow users to create and manipulate data and equations and evaluate how systems evolve for predictions about future behavior.

“The methods are intended for application by interested users globally as a way for decision-makers to make high-level, energy-related government policy and business decisions related to carbon storage activities,” Angela Goodman, an NETL researcher, said.

NETL methods and tools related to underground storage have been used internationally, per officials, including in China, Canada, Israel, Sweden, and Norway.

Since 2007, the Laboratory’s Regional Carbon Storage Partners (RCSPs) have used NETL innovations to estimate prospective CO2 storage in the United States, in addition to parts of Mexico and Canada.