Article by Dutchnews informs that the highest Dutch administrative court has given the green light to a project intended to store huge volumes of CO₂ in empty gas reservoirs under the North Sea.
It relates to the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Porthos Project, as we already mentioned in a post from October 2022 “Reasons why the future of carbon capture looks promising”.
Porthos stands for Port of Rotterdam CO₂ Transport Hub and Offshore Storage. The aim is to store 2.5 megatonnes of CO₂ a year – or 1.5% of total emissions.
One key concern was that during the construction, too much nitrogen-compound pollution would be released. But that was ruled as temporary and not having a major impact on the environment. Recall here the huge concern the Dutch have related to nitrogen.
This CCS project will be the first in the Netherlands, Britain also has plans to start two CCS projects and Norway is also working with the technology.
Click at the image below to read the full article.
Besides being increasingly cited, CCS is also studied more and more.
A new research published in Marine and Petroleum Geology investigated potencial problems, aiming In the Danish North Sea, where chalk rocks below the sea bed hold depleted oil and gas reserves and are now also being considered for storing CO₂ to capitalize upon the pre-established infrastructure from the fossil fuel industry.
The researchers recreated the environmental conditions (temperature and pressure) of the rock from the seabed before injecting supercritical CO₂ into the rock over a period of nine days. They then used a series of chemical and physical techniques to analyse the hydrocarbons present in rock samples taken before and after supercritical CO₂ injection.
Initial results revealed that the supercritical CO₂ caused lighter hydrocarbons to move through the rock, while heavier forms, such as bitumen and asphaltene-rich immobile oil, were left behind. This can cause blockages in the mobilisation of the carbon dioxide through the rock and hamper the efficiency of the CCS system.
Click here to access this study by Rasmus Stenshøj from Aarhus University, Denmark, and colleagues at the Energy & Environmental Research Center, U.S.
