The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) has selected two additional projects to receive $5 million in total federal funding: one each under DE-FOA-0001829 Developing Technologies for Advancement of Associated Geologic Storage for Basinal Geo-Laboratories, and DE-FOA-0001830 Transformational Pre-Combustion Carbon Capture Technologies.  A key priority for FE is to reduce the cost and risk of carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technologies to accelerate widespread deployment. 

The two selected projects will join five other pre-combustion capture projects announced in July 2018 that received approximately $6.4 million, and two other associated geologic storage projects announced in August 2018 that received approximately $7 million.

Pre-combustion capture is applicable to gasification, including integrated gasification combined cycle power plants, where coal is converted into gaseous fuel (hydrogen and carbon monoxide, or “syngas”) by applying heat under pressure in the presence of steam and oxygen. The carbon is captured from the syngas before it is combusted in the gas turbine.  Such projects will help make progress toward meeting FE’s goal of carbon dioxide (CO₂) capture with 95 percent CO₂ purity at a cost of electricity 30 percent less than baseline capture approaches. The selected pre-combustion capture project is supported by FE’s Carbon Capture Program.

Associated geologic storage refers to the storage of CO₂ along with enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and/or enhanced gas recovery operations. Carbon storage, in association with EOR, offers a means to help offset capture, transportation, and storage costs—thereby accelerating the implementation of geologic storage. The selected geologic storage project is supported by FE’s Carbon Storage Program.

The National Energy Technology Laboratory will manage these projects, which are described below:

Pre-Combustion Capture

1. Bench-Scale Testing of a High-Efficiency, Ultra-Compact Process for Pre-Combustion CO₂ Capture — University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA) plans to field-validate the technical feasibility of a membrane- and adsorption-enhanced water gas shift process that employs a carbon molecular sieve membrane reactor (MR) followed by an adsorption reactor (AR) for pre-combustion CO₂ capture. The main goal of this bench-scale project is to advance the proposed MR-AR transformational CO₂ capture technology to a sufficient maturity level so that industrial partners can adapt the technology for further small pilot-scale testing.

DOE Funding: $2,000,000; Non-DOE Funding: $525,926; Total Value: $2,525,926

Associated Geologic Storage

2. Developing CO2-EOR and Associated Storage within the Residual Oil Zone Fairways of the Powder River Basin, Wyoming – University of Wyoming (Laramie, WY) plans to establish the technical and economic viability of associated CO₂ storage and oil recovery in the greenfield (“fairway”) residual oil zones (ROZ) of the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana. The project will use a field-based laboratory in the ROZ fairway, located northeast of the Salt Creek oil field, to provide valuable analogs, geological formation, and reservoir characterization data.

DOE Funding: $2,895,322; Non-DOE Funding: $1,642,861; Total Value: $4,538,183

The Office of Fossil Energy funds research and development projects to reduce the risk and cost of advanced fossil energy technologies, and further the sustainable use of the Nation’s fossil resources. To learn more about the programs within the Office of Fossil Energy, visit the Office of Fossil Energy website or sign up for FE news announcements. Information on current FE funding announcements can be found on the FE Solicitation and Business Opportunities website. More information about FE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory is available on the NETL website.