Micromeritics has revealed that its Autopore mercury porosimeter and other analytical tools are being used by researchers to study potential CO2 sequestration sites.
The combustion of fossil fuels for energy has steadily increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere.
Of the numerous trace gases, CO2 is a major component making up the majority of these emissions.
CO2 sequestration involves the capture and secure storage of not only existing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, but emitted CO2 as well.
There are numerous energy-related approaches to managing CO2 that include several carbon-free energy sources (for example, nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal and biomass energy).
Scientists are also searching for ways to increase the efficiency of energy conversion so that smaller amounts of fossil fuel energy are required for the same energy output.
A number of researchers now believe that sequestration of CO2 in deep geological formations shows promise as a long-term solution for safely storing CO2 that is captured through clean-up efforts.
The basic idea involves compressing captured CO2 into a dense fluid and injecting it into a porous deep geological formation, where the rising CO2 fluid is sealed beneath a layer of impermeable cap-rock.
The US Department of Energy, led by the NETL and Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships (RCSP) in partnership with industry and academia, is pursuing a CO2 Sequestration Research, Development, and Demonstration Programme.
Field tests are currently taking place throughout the US and Canada.
Storage areas being investigated include depleted oil and gas reservoirs, unminable coal seams, and deep saline formations.
Many of these formations have contained naturally stored CO2, other gases, and fluids for millions of years and are believed to have the potential to store many years of human-generated CO2.
Many factors have to be studied prior to determination and full-scale implementation of appropriate sequestration sites.
Factors such as proper engineering design and monitoring, hydrologic-geochemical-geomechanical processes that govern the long-term storage of CO2 in the subsurface need to be understood.
Research scientists require methods to characterise geological materials that help determine the value of the formation as a reservoir.
Since 1962, Micromeritics has supplied analytical tools that determine porosity and surface area, critical measurements needed for the study of potential CO2 sequestration sites.
Surface area and mercury porosimetry instruments have been used as necessary tools to characterise the sealing and fluid-transport properties of fine-grained sedimentary rocks under the pressure and temperature conditions of geological CO2.
Pore volume measurements help predict the capacity of a formation.
Pore size is an important variable in determining the rate at which CO2 will flow through the formation while filling.
Micromeritics's Autopore mercury porosimeter has been used to determine the sealing capacity and pore-throat aperture size distribution on reservoir core samples.
Fluid transport experiments can be complemented by the combination of BET specific surface area data collected on Micromeritics's ASAP 2020 accelerated surface and porosimetry system and mercury porosimetry data.
These experiments help reveal significant changes in the transport properties and sealing efficiency of the samples.
The ASAP 2020 is also an ideal tool for measuring micropore and mesopore distributions in coal, therefore providing valuable information for ECBM studies.
Micromeritics's ASAP 2050 Xtended pressure sorption analyser and Particulate Systems' HPVA-100 high-pressure volumetric analyser are ideal instruments for evaluating the storage capacity of CO2 sorbents at high pressures.
The ASAP 2050 is a high-resolution instrument that provides capacity as a function of storage pressure for vacuum to 10 bar.
The HPVA extends the characterisation to 100 or 200 bar.
Both the ASAP 2050 and HPVA allow researchers to evaluate materials under real-world conditions.
International governments, with the aid of the scientific community, must find a way to eliminate the excess CO2 in our atmosphere generated from the burning of fossil fuel.
Preliminary data suggest the sequestration of CO2 in geologic formations presents a promising solution.
The goal of storing massive amounts of CO2 depends partially on a number of physical characteristics needed for research on each of many geological formations.
Micromeritics's expertise and its materials characterisation instrumentation have already been, and will continue to be, instrumental in providing important measurements required for CO2 sequestration projects.
