A joint venture between NRG Energy and JX Nippon Oil & Gas aims to use carbon dioxide extracted from power plants for improved crude oil recovery. The carbon capture technology taps into flue gases released from NRG’s WA Parish coal plant near Houston. Flue gas, which consists of carbon dioxide and a mix of other gases, is pumped into a capture system, where CO2 is pulled out with a solvent that forms a temporary bond with CO2. The gas is then released from the solvent with a slight reheating. The purified CO2 is pumped deep into an oil field near Victoria, Texas where it binds with crude oil and increases the viscosity of the oil, making it easier to pump the oil out of the ground. The mixture is next pumped up to the surface and separated. CO2 is sent back into the extraction loop to pump out more oil. “Any solution that doesn't take carbon from the air is, in principle, not sustainable,” physicist Peter Eisenberger of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, who is developing a method to extract CO2 from the sky, said in a Yale Environment 360 Report. Over the next several decades, oil recovery from aging fields is expected to consume around 33 billion metric tons of CO2 in total, according to an estimate conducted by John Thompson, director of the Fossil Fuel Transition Project for the non-profit Clean Air Task Force.

• published: 29 Oct 2014
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