£3.25m funding aims to speed up CCS development

The EPSRC has awarded £3.25m to four research projects to study the geological viability and safety of storing CO2 in depleted North Sea oil and gas fields or saline aquifers.

The projects will focus on optimising the way CO2 is injected into the ground, monitoring the site after injection, determining where any potential leaking gas has come from, and studying how the underground rock structure responds to the oil drilling and CO2 injection process.

Science minister David Willetts said in a statement: “Finding ways to reduce our CO2 emissions requires the latest research, especially around new technologies like carbon capture and storage.

“The UK’s world-class scientists are extremely well-placed to tackle this challenge thanks to continued investment in skills, knowledge and cutting edge projects like these.”

Imperial College London will lead a £1.2m project to develop optimisation tools for CO2 injection well placement that will support the design of industrial scale storage operations and maximise storage capacity utilisation.

This will involve investigating the effects of temperature and pressure on fracture and fault behaviour within the storage reservoir and the layer of ‘caprock’ that will form a seal above it, and studying ways to prevent the wellbore and caprock from leaking.

Edinburgh University will receive £236,000 to determine if the signature of noble gases and carbon and oxygen isotopes found in captured CO2 can act as a natural tracer that would enable well operators to identify and track any leaks to their source.

To do this, the researchers will determine the fingerprint of CO2 captured from several of the UK capture demonstration projects and compare to CO2 from an active storage site to see if the gas fingerprint is retained once it has been injected.

The NERC British Geological Survey will lead a £894,000 project to develop non-invasive methods to monitor underground carbon storage sites using techniques including 3D time-lapse seismic surveys, sensitive geophones (which convert ground movement into electrical signals) and satellite measurements of ground movements.

Suitable above-ground techniques would avoid the need to drill observation wells into storage sites that could cause leaks.

Finally, NERC British Geological Survey will also lead a £925,000 project studying how the caprock and “reservoir” rocks respond to oil and gas extraction followed by ‘re-inflation’ as CO2 is injected, by measuring changes in stress, volume and permeability in the laboratory.

Geoscientists will use this data to produce simulations that will help forecast the geomechanical processes in CO2 storage sites over extended periods of time (up to 10,000 years).

The projects will operate under UK CCS Research Centre and the funding will come from the £125 million set aside by the government for CCS research and development.

Dave Delpy, CEO of EPSRC, said: “These projects will help accelerate the deployment of Carbon Capture and Storage, enabling the UK to maintain its world leading role in this vital low carbon technology.”