Captivating idea for saving a planet

China and Britain work closely on storing CO2 waste underground

The United Kingdom and China are leading research in a new wave of cutting-edge carbon capture and storage technology through close scientific collaboration, offering the hope of deep and rapid cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.

CCS is the process of capturing waste CO2 from fossil fuel power plants, transporting it to a storage site and depositing it where it will not enter the atmosphere. Australia, Canada, China, Europe and the United States are leading the development of these technologies, which are still at a demonstration stage.

Luke Warren, chief executive of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association in London, says the UK and China both have great expertise in CCS technology.

The UK is one of the best places to develop CCS, he says, because the North Sea provides a vast and untapped CO2 store, with 70 billion tons of offshore CO2 storage capacity, which is optimally located for major emission-intensive areas of Europe. Similarly, China has substantial geological sequestration capacity.

China is a world leader in its expertise in developing advanced coal technologies, and can build CCS facilities more quickly and more cheaply than can be done in Europe, he says.

"By combining China's engineering capability and cost advantages with the UK's expertise in the oil and gas field and advanced CCS technology experience, it is hoped that technical and financial challenges to implementing CCS can be addressed more effectively," Warren says.

Collaboration on CCS technology between China and the UK started in 2005, with funding from both governments on joint research that can help to build demonstration projects in both countries.

In China, the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office is supporting two CCS projects through its Prosperity Fund. One looks at early demonstration of cost-effective CCS potential in non-power industrial sectors in order to address problems of coordination between the capture and storage sectors.

The second is carrying out feasibility studies for capture-ready projects on new power plants in Guangdong province in southern China, aiming to demonstrate cost-effective ways to develop CCS.

Liang Xi, a senior lecturer in energy finance at the University of Edinburgh, who was involved in initially setting up the UK China CCS collaboration, which began in 2005, says the collaboration came about because the UK believed decarbonizing coal is important for the climate change agenda and wanted to help China learn from CCS technology.

The first phase of collaboration focused on regulatory frameworks relating to power plants, which finished in 2009. In 2012 the second phase of the collaboration started, focusing on feasibility studies of the technology.

"China's energy structure is dominated by fossil fuel technology, so it is important for China to understand CCS technology," Liang says. "The UK is one of the few countries that has put CCS on a strategic agenda, so the collaboration is very important."

A milestone in the bilateral collaboration was the establishment of the UK-China (Guangdong) Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage Center last year, which focuses on transferring technology from leading UK research institutes and companies to Chinese organizations, helping China to build up CCS technology capability.

The founding members of the center were the UK Carbon Capture and Storage Research Centre, the Scottish Carbon Capture and Storage, the Guangdong Low-carbon Technology and Industry Research Centre and the Clean Fossil Energy Development Institute.

Liang, who is also the secretary-general of the UK-China (Guangdong) CCUS Center, says the primary motivation of the collaboration is to help China build up its CCS capability, so the China market can create opportunities for UK CCS technology companies.

Such collaboration also allows UK CCS technology companies to have the first opportunity to access the Chinese CCS market and develop a better understanding of it.

"It will be a win-win partnership," Liang says. "If the Chinese institutes have more understanding of the CCS technology and the Chinese government is more willing to deploy it, there will be a market and there will be opportunities for companies in the UK and Europe."

Alstom, Shell and Howden Group of the UK are now taking part in the technology transfer process, sharing their expertise with Chinese companies.

In China, China Resources Power is working with the UK-China (Guangdong) CCUS Center on carbon capture readiness, in its Haifeng project.

The China Resources Power (Haifeng) project plans to build eight 1 gigawatt ultra-supercritical units. It will be the first Guangdong CCUS demonstration project, providing a full-scale CCS-ready interface installation scheme for the feasibility study and design stages.

The center is also working with China National Offshore Oil Corporation aiming to identify Chinese offshore storage sites and working on engineering issues related to offshore storage.

It is also working with the Guangdong Electric Design Power Institute, the largest design institute in China, with 3,000 engineers.

Liang says the work of the UK-China (Guangdong) CCUS Center will eventually create a few demonstration projects to prove that CCS technology can be successfully deployed by Chinese companies.

A part of the UK China CCS collaboration is a joint 1.5 million pounds ($2.3 million, 1.9 million euros) research project between the University of Nottingham and Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, which started four years ago, funded by the Engineering Physical Sciences Research Council UK and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Colin Snape, director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in CCS and Cleaner Fossil Energy at the University of Nottingham, says the research focuses on technology that can help reduce the energy expended, which experts call the energy penalty, when capturing CO2. Separating CO2 from the other gases in the plant's exhaust stream and then compressing it for transport by pipeline requires energy that significantly reduces the output of power plants, typically by up to 20 percent.

The first-generation technology for capturing CO2 technology is one that uses amine solvents. "This technology, adapted from the oil and gas industry, is not necessarily the best technology for capturing CO2, either for power plants or large industrial sites, such as iron and steel manufacturing," he says.

Snape says his team is working on a new form of technology that uses solids rather than solvents for CO2 capture, which will significantly reduce the energy penalty associated with CO2 capture.

"We have shown that the material we develop will have a much lower energy penalty and hence can reduce costs compared with solvent-based technology."

After four years' research, the new technology developed by the University of Nottingham and the Shanghai Advanced Research Institute is now ready to be piloted. Snape says the two partners are getting ready to pilot the technology in the UK and in China. If successful, the technology can then be implemented for industrial use at a later stage.

In October the two parties signed a memorandum of understanding on jointly moving to the pilot stage. Snape says the pilot will take 2-3 years to finish, before it can be moved to the next stage of full deployment in a power plant.

Experts see great potential for UK-China CCS collaboration, and they say CCS technology is highly important to climate change solutions.

Jon Gibbons, director of the UK CCS Research Centre, says CCS is important in being able to achieve the necessary reductions in emissions at the lowest possible cost. China and the UK can also work together to get CCS accepted as an important option in international climate change negotiations, he says.

As demonstration projects start to be built, UK and Chinese industry and researchers can collaborate by making use of their relevant expertise, Gibbons says.

In one joint UK-China initiative, the concept of modular capture units is being developed; these would be made in China and sold globally. Chinese collaboration and financing in the next stages of the UK CCS market would also be welcomed, he says.

Offshore geological storage of CO2 a kilometer and more under the seabed is important for the UK and for Guangdong and other Chinese coastal provinces, he says. Chinese and UK offshore industry specialists are collaborating to develop this new field of industrial activity.

Warren says the China-UK collaboration can go beyond scientific research to exchanges of knowledge on policy frameworks, as both countries have CCS development high on their policy agenda.

cecily.liu@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 11/28/2014 page21)