Carbon Storage Test Called Key To Coal’s Future

By Debra McCown
Reporter / Bristol Herald Courier
Published: August 18, 2008

ABINGDON, Va. – With a formal site groundbreaking today, researchers are preparing to test a technology that would allow carbon dioxide to be stored underground instead of released into the air.

“This is a major event in securing the future of coal nationally,” U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher said in an e-mail from his press secretary.

Boucher, who is scheduled to speak at today’s ceremony in Russell County, Va.,  often has discussed federal climate change legislation on the near horizon that will limit carbon dioxide emissions. He says having a place to store the gas will be essential to the continued use of coal when such regulations are imposed.

The two-month-long Russell County test will inject 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide into unminable coal seams, said Nino Ripepi, project manager of the test for the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research.

Carbon dioxide, as well as other chemical compounds, act as “greenhouse gases,” which allow sunlight to freely enter the atmosphere. When sunlight strikes the earth’s surface, some is re-radiated back towards space as infrared radiation or heat.

Greenhouse gases absorb and trap the heat in the atmosphere, thus contributing to global warming.

The Russell County test, which will use an existing coalbed methane well to inject the CO2, is the second of three phases in a project to demonstrate the viability of carbon storage technology for commercial use.

It will be the first such test in the central Appalachian region.

Ripepi said the first phase, a characterization study, shows a storage capacity of up to 1.34 billion tons – or enough to store more than 100 years worth of carbon dioxide emissions from the power plants in Carbo and Virginia City.

The third phase would be a larger scale test to demonstrate the technology.

The project is funded primarily by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, with the rest of the cost paid by industry.

“CO2 storage is essential for continued use of coal when CO2 controls are imposed by Congress,” Boucher said in the e-mail.

“Coal seams will be a major way that CO2 will be stored and the Russell county test, which begins Monday, is the most important federally funded step to date in proving the ability of coal seams to sequester CO2.”

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