Archer Daniels Midland Co. held the official
groundbreaking this week for a carbon capture and storage project primarily funded by the federal government, while Dow Chemical Co. announced a new carbon capture pilot project it's developing.
The U.S. Department of Energy is providing $66.7 million of Archer Daniels Midland's $84 million project taking place in Illinois. The test of carbon capture and storage (CCS) will take carbon dioxide waste from a corn mill and bury it in liquid form about 8,000 feet into the ground.
Archer Daniels Midland expects to begin injecting the CO2 into the ground in about a year, sending down 1,000 metric tons of emissions per day until they reach 1 million metric tons in 2013.
The CO2 will go into the spaces within sandstone, underneath layers of shale, and the project will be monitored for CO2 leaks. The Illinois project is the one of seven CCS projects receiving funding from the government, and as the one closest to completion, will be watched closely to determine the viability of CCS technology and methods.
West Virginia will also be the site of another test of carbon capture, but not carbon storage.
Dow Chemical Co. and Alstom, a French energy company, are working on a pilot project that will capture CO2 from a South Charleston chemical manufacturing plant's coal-fired boiler.
Alston will design, build and operate the plant, which is expected to capture 1,800 tons of CO2 annually from the Dow plant starting this fall. The plant will bond ammonia derivatives, or amines, with the CO2, but the CO2 will then be stripped from the amines using heat,
releasing the CO2 into the atmosphere.
Alston also has a commercial CO2 capture project planned at a Polish power plant, which, starting in 2011, will use amines to capture CO2 that will be stored underground.
Smokestacks - CC license by Nucho
