In January 1993, as part of the Joule II Non-nuclear Energy Research Programme, the European Commission initiated a two year study of the potential for the disposal of industrial quantifies of carbon dioxide underground, with a view to reducing emissions to the atmosphere. The participants in the study were the British Geological Survey (UK), TNO Institute of Applied Geoscience (The Netherlands), BRGM (France), CRE Group Ltd (UK), IKU Petroleum Research (Norway), RWE AG (Germany), University of Sunderland Renewable Energy Centre (UK) and Statoil (Norway). The objective of the study was to examine whether carbon dioxide emissions from large point sources such as power stations, could be disposed of safely, economically and with no adverse effects on man and the environment. doi:10.1016/0196-8904(95)00308-8. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0196890495003088

The objective of the EU SiteChar Project was to facilitate the implementation of CO2 geological storage in Europe by developing a methodology for the assessment of potential storage sites and the preparation of storage permit applications. Research was conducted through a strong collaboration of experienced industrial and academic research partners aiming to advance a portfolio of sites to a (near-) completed feasibility stage, ready for detailed front-end engineering and design and produce practical guidelines for site characterisation. SiteChar was a 3 year project supported by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme. Project website http://www.sitechar-co2.eu.

3 datasets comprising of electron holograms acquired during in situ heating of a magnetite particle within a transmission electron microscope. Details of the experimental acquisition of the electron holograms can be found in the publications: Almeida, T. P., Muxworthy, A. R., Kovács, A., Williams, W., Brown, P. D., and Dunin-Borkowski, R. E. (2016) Direct visualization of the thermomagnetic behavior of pseudo-single-domain magnetite particles. Science Advances, 2(4), e1501801 & Almeida, T. P., Muxworthy, A. R., Kovács, A., Williams, W., Nagy, L., Ó Conbhuí, P., Frandsen, C., Supakulopas, R., Dunin-Borkowski, R. E. (2016): Direct observation of the thermal demagnetization of a vortex structure held by a non-ideal magnetite recorder. Geophysical Research Letters, 42, DOI: 10.1002/2016GL070074.

This poster on the UKCCSRC Call 2 project, Novel reductive rejuvenation approaches for degraded amine solutions from PCC in power plants, was presented at the Cardiff Biannual, 10.09.14. Grant number: UKCCSRC-C2-189.

While chemical looping (combustion, CLC) is a promising technology for carbon capture, however many questions still remain as to its applicability at an industrial scale. In Chemical looping combustion a metal oxide is shuttled back and forth between a fuel and air reactor, picking up oxygen in the air reactor and transferring it to the fuel reactor. The fuel is never mixed with the nitrogen from the air, so a stream of CO2 and H2O is produced directly from the fuel reactor; this potentially makes the integrated power production and CO2 capture system highly efficient. Most CLC and CLOU schemes envisage using fluidised beds in which the solid fuel is intimately mixed with the oxygen carrier, or mixing of the solid fuel particles. This project aims to push forward chemical looping within the UK and integrates both experimental work and theoretical analysis to result in the first large-scale demonstration of CLC within the UK. Grant number: UKCCSRC-C1-39.

This Proposal focuses on the determination of the dew point of water (H2O), or “water solubility”, in impure CO2 mixtures (e.g. containing nitrogen, N2, oxygen, O2, hydrogen, H2, or mixtures of N2 + H2). The proposed work is a direct result of new findings in our project under Call 1, where we have obtained highly reproducible data for water solubility in CO2 + N2 using infrared spectroscopy and are well on the way to implementing an independent route using the so-called “Karl-Fischer” titration technique to give independent validation of our results. We have shown that the solubility of H2O is significantly reduced by the presence of even low concentrations of N2, a finding which has direct implications on anthropogenic CO2 transportation pipeline specifications and operation (e.g. internal corrosion). Such data have been identified by the Advanced Power Generation Technology Forum (APGTF) and the priorities specified in the UKCCRC Research And Pathways to Impact Delivery (RAPID) Handbook as being crucial for developing safe CO2 transportation in both the gaseous and dense phase. This Project has been designed to fill gaps in the available data, which are crucial for the safe implementation of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) because liquid water is highly acidic in the presence of excess CO2; this acidity can be increased by trace amounts of sulphur dioxide (SO2) and hydrogen sulphide (H2S), and this acidity will greatly accelerate corrosion in transportation pipelines and can cause further problems in sub-surface storage. Keeping water and CO2 in a single phase during transportation will largely avoid these problems. In Call 1, we set out to design and develop two complementary experimental approaches using either Infrared spectroscopy or Karl-Fischer titration. The key is now to understand the major implications for the complex range of CCS mixtures. A further complication is that the phase behaviour is highly dependent on both composition and temperature, therefore in order to fully understand the behaviour of water in the context of CCS requires further measurements. For this project we are targeting the needs outlined by National Grid in their letter for pre-combustion CCS where H2 is a likely contaminant. We have obtained preliminary data for H2 which shows that the effects may be greater than for N2, but this needs full validation. Furthermore, we propose to test the widespread assumption that the behaviour of O2 impurities will mirror that of N2. O2 is important in CCS coupled to the oxyfuel technology. Grant number: UKCCSRC-C2-185.

Geochemical data: %C, %OC, %IC, %N Physical Property data: Wet and dry bulk density, water content, porosity. Sediment cores extracted from Offshore Region: Loch Sunart NM 70277 63360, 56.705259, -5.7545471. For more information see published report, Substantial stores of sedimentary carbon held in mid-latitude fjords. / Smeaton, Craig; Austin, William; Davies, Althea; Baltzar, A.; Abell, R. E.; Howe, J. A. doi:10.5194/bg-13-5771-2016

Aqueous amine scrubbing was originally developed for natural gas treatment and is currently considered to be the current best available technology for post-combustion capture (PCC) of CO2 from both pulverised fuel (PF) and natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) power plants. A major issue is the severe thermo-oxidative degradation of alkanomaine solvents that occurs in PCC compared to natural gas processing, with the problem being compounded by the presence of acid gases that lead to the formation of heat stable salts (HSS). The accumulation of degradation products is known to reduce CO2 capture efficiency and cause excessive foaming and fouling and unacceptably high corrosion rates. Current measures to compensate for degradation involves purging spent solvent solution for reclaimation, makeup with fresh amine and the addition of anti-foam and oxidation/corrosion inhibitors. Reclaimer technologies based on distillation, ion-exchange and elecrodialysis have been developed to deal primarily with HSS where distillation has the advantage of removing both the HSS and their anions (i.e. formate and acetate). However, these technologies do not deal with the majority of the other degradation products, particularly those arising from thermal and oxidative degradation. Further, it has generally recognised that MEA forms high boiling polymeric material where N-(2-hydroxyethyl)-ethylenediamine (HEEDA), in particular, may continue to degrade in the presence of CO2 to form longer substituted ethlyenediamines. This proposal has been prompted by our extremely promising preliminary results that the thermal and oxidative degradation of an amine polymer (polyethyleneimine) can largely be reversed using both hydrogenation and hydrothermal (hydrous) treatments. We used non-catalytic hydropyrolysis and hydrous pyrolysis treatments at temperatures below 250oC which were clearly effective in reducing oxygen functionalities without causing any degradation of the polymer chain. The challenge is to partially reduce degraded amines to hydroxyamines and also, for polymeric forms, to induce some hydrogenolysis to reduce chain lengths. Hydrous pyrolysis has the potential advantage of not directly requiring hydrogen with water being the hydrogen source. Judicious choice of catalysts provides selectivity for hydrogenation and hydrogenolysis and research on amine degradation in natural gas sweetening has shown degradation products, such as N,N-bis(2-hydroxy-ethyl)piperazine and N,N,N-tris(2-hydroxyethyl)ethylenediamine, can be converted back to hydroxyamines by a hydrotreating reactions . •Directly targeting a high research priority identified by the RAPID Handbook, the proposed research aims to investigate novel reductive approaches for rejuvenating spent amine solutions from PCC plants, namely selective catalytic hydrotreatments at modest temperatures and H2 pressures and hydrous pyrolysis (hydrothermal conversion). The specific objectives are: 1.To apply the hydrogenation/ hydropyrolysis and hydrothermal treatments to individual compounds, including 1-(2-hydroxyethyl)-2-imidazolidone (HEIA), HEEDA, .N-(2-hydroxyethyl)acetamide and N-methylformamide 2.Based on the model compound results, to conduct experiments on actual fractions from degraded amine solvents, notably the residues from distillation containing HSS and the compounds targeted above; and 3.To use the results to define the overall benefits hydrogenation, hydropyrolysis and hydrothermal treatments in solvent rejuvenation and a basis for planning the subsequent research needed to take forward these new treatments, in terms of identifying how these treatments can best be conducted continuously. Grant number: UKCCSRC-C2-189.

This poster on the UKCCSRC Call 2 project, Measurement of water solubility limits of CO2 mixtures to underpin the safe pipeline transportation of CO2, was presented at the Cranfield Biannual, 21.04.15. Grant number: UKCCSRC-C2-185.

In January 1993, as part of the Joule II Non-nuclear Energy Research Programme, the European Commission initiated a two year study of the potential for the disposal of industrial quantifies of carbon dioxide underground, with a view to reducing emissions to the atmosphere. The participants in the study were the British Geological Survey (UK), TNO Institute of Applied Geoscience (The Netherlands), BRGM (France), CRE Group Ltd (UK), IKU Petroleum Research (Norway), RWE AG (Germany), University of Sunderland Renewable Energy Centre (UK) and Statoil (Norway). The objective of the study was to examine whether carbon dioxide emissions from large point sources such as power stations, could be disposed of safely, economically and with no adverse effects on man and the environment. Project No. CT92-0031.