Carbon Sequestration in India

What is Carbon sequestration??

Carbon sequestration refers to the capture and long term storage of carbon dioxide in forest, ocean or in deep geological formations to reduce the concentration of  CO2 in the atmosphere

R&D Technologies Geology & Tectonics Protocols, Mechanisms & Forums - Kyoto Protocol; Clean development Mechanism (CDM); Carbon

sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF); UN Framework Convention Treaty on Climate Changes (UNFCC), Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6) etc.

- India has signed the Kyoto Protocol in 2003 but is not obliged to reduce the emission by 2012 as the per capita emission is very low (~1 metric ton /year). India is a member of CSLF, CDM, AP6 and also stands by UNFCC.

Safety & Environment Economics - The current cost estimates range from 20 to 80 US$/tCO2 for

capturing the CO2 and 5 to 20 US$/tCO2 for transportation and storage

Carbon dioxide emissions per capitaDescription : Carbon dioxide emissions per capita Anthropogenic carbon dioxide

emissions stemming from the burning of fossil fuels, gas flaring and the production of cement.

Source : UN Common Database (CDIAC)Category : EnvironmentRanking : 54 (2002)

Unit of measurement: Metric tons per capita

INDIA

(Tons CO2 per person)

India has signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2003 but is not obliged to cut emissions up to 2012. India is also a member of CSLF,CDM, AP6 & stands by UNFCC.

India’ strategy for managing Energy-Carbon

Conflict ♦ Efficiency enhancement technologies

(EIDM, Waste Heat, MALAE cycle etc.) ♦ IGCC big development ♦ Carbon capture technologies ♦ Carbon storage technologies

1. Carbon capture technologies contributes about 67% of the total cost. Balance being shared by transport and fixing

technologies. The cost impact must be less than

10%.

2. Carbon capture technologies are highly IPR driven and mechanism for international collaboration needs thorough policy framework.

3. Developing nations like India with good intellectual

Prowess, needs funding support for R&D

Carbon capturing

Potential CO2 capturing & storage reservoirs

Physical and geochemical processes that enhance storage security

Geological Sequestration

• Deep underground formations• Depleted oil and gas reservoirs• Coal beds• Deep Saline formations

Industrially generated CO2 is pumped into deep under ground formations and dissolves in the native formation fluids. Some of the dissolved CO2 would chemically react and become part of solid mineral/ coal matrix. Once dissolved or reacted to form minerals, CO2 is no longer buoyant andwould not rise to the ground surface.

CO2 sequestration in depleted oil/gas reservoirs can enhance production of oil/gas. Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) can be either miscible or immiscible depending primarily on the pressure of the injection gas into the reservoir. Miscible phase: CO2-EOR, the CO2 mixes with the crude oil causing it to swell and reduce its viscosity, whilst also increasing or maintaining reservoir pressure. The combination of these processes enables more of the crude oil in the reservoir to flow freely to the production wells from which it can be recovered.

Immiscible phase: CO2-EOR, the CO2 is used to re-pressure the reservoir and as a sweep gas, to move the oil towards the production well.

CO2 enhanced oil recovery

Enhanced Coalbed Methane Recovery (ECBM)

Coal beds typically contain large amounts of methane rich gas that is adsorbed onto the surface of the coal. The injected CO2 efficiently displaces methane as it has greater affinity to the coal than methane.

CO2 enhanced coal bed methaneproduction

Density of CO2 and CH4 as a function of pressure for various Temperatures based on data from Vargaftik et al. (1996).

Terrestrial SequestrationTerrestrial carbon sequestration is defined as either the net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere or the prevention of CO2 net emissions fromthe terrestrial ecosystems into the atmosphere. The following ecosystemsoffer significant opportunity for carbon sequestration:

• Forest lands• Agricultural lands• Biomass croplands• Deserts and degraded lands• Wetlands and peat lands -- Storage of C in soils and plants has the potential to offset CO2 emissions to the atmosphere in the coming decades while new ‘clean’ energy production and CO2 sequestration technologies are developed and deployed. What is needed is basic research to improve our fundamental understanding of natural phenomena controlling soil C sequestration and basic and applied R&D to bring new management and technology to the challenge.

Ocean SequestrationCO2 is soluble in ocean water, and oceans absorb and emit huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere through natural processes. Ocean Sequestration has huge potential as a carbon storage sink, however, enough R&D have to be carried out to understand about the physio-chemical processeswhich occur between seawater and pumped CO2.

Storage of CO2 in deep oceans has been suggested as a means of reducing inputs of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

Conceptual diagram of Photosynthetic conversion of carbon dioxide to biomass.

• The solar energy is collected using Fresnel lens devices/parabolic concentrator and a fibre optic light delivery system is used to stimulate biological organisms like cyanobacteria or micro-algae in a bio-generator to produce useful by-products from carbon dioxide.

• For uniform growth of the organisms, the distribution of photosynthetic photon flux light in the wavelength range of 400–700 nm needs to be delivered to the bioreactor.

• The photo-bioreactor system makes use of the natural process ‘photosynthesis’ to convert light, heat and carbon dioxide to useful products, such as carbohydrates, hydrogen and oxygen.

6CO2 (aq) + 6H2O(l)+ light + heat C6H12O6(aq) +6O2(g)

• Assuming that the carbon uptake rate of 1.5 g/day for the particular micro-organism, Synechocystis aquatilis, up to 2.2 k tonne C/year could be sequestered from the environment.

Bio-sequestration The concept of photosynthetic conversionto fix carbon dioxide using bacteria or micro-algae under a controlled environment.

Breakthrough Technologies

- Iron Fertilization implies the introduction of iron to the upper ocean to increase productivity of marine food chain which in turn increases CO2 sequestration from the atmosphere into the oceans. Marine plankton growth is enhanced by physically distributing the iron particles in other wise nutrient rich but iron deficient ocean water using suitable delivering systems based on biomaterials.

Iron Fertilization

Biomimetic Sequestration- It implies the use of a particular aspect of biological process for resolving a specific non biological problem. The Carbonic Anhydrase (CA) is used as a catalyst for the conversion of CO2 into bicarbonates and later to carbonates or amino acids.

Soil Productivity ?

Conclusions- CO2 storage R&D is still in early stage in India and developing cost effective technologies for CCS are the major challenges to the scientist and researchers.

-The environmental risks involved in the storage of CO2 particularly in geological formations and oceans have to be evaluated in detail by monitoring and modeling in terms of long term stability.

- Funding mechanisms to support R&D projects for CCS have to be evaluated. 0.5% cess on power generation in the line of oil cess may be good enough to sustain the same. The cess can be operated by Energy Security Development Board, under the aegis of Ministry of Power.

‘If every country was to spend just 2-3% of their GDP, the impact of possible global climate change could be mitigated’