Since the first edition of Carbon Capture and Storage was published in 2010, there has been a dramatic growth in the breadth and depth of research and development work on topics directed towards carbon capture, storage, and utilization (CCSU) in order to address the ever more pressing challenge of climate change.

This R&D work, progressed through the creative efforts of thousands of physicists, chemists, biologists, engineers, and others, in teams working in both academic and industrial environments, has revealed many new and exciting potential routes towards the goal of a low energy and environmentally sound technology for carbon capture that is sufficiently low cost to be deployable on a global scale. Bi-phasic and switchable solvents, flexible metal-organic frameworks, and artificial photosynthesis are among many topics that have seen 10- to 30-fold increases in the cumulative number of published research papers during this period.

Alongside this exploration of new avenues, similar efforts have also been directed towards improving the performance of the more mature processes such as amine absorption where, for example, catalysis of both absorption and regeneration, and solutions to amine degradation have seen similar increases in the volume of publications.

Unfortunately this impressive progress has not been mirrored at the demonstration and deployment end of the technology development lifecycle, and one of the more disheartening aspects of preparing this second edition has been the need to extensively excise the lists of projects that had been announced in 2010, and to include addenda to several pilot project descriptions to the effect that the planned scale-up was canceled for a variety of reasons that can be conveniently gathered under the root cause heading—“political dithering.”

The net result of the faltering support for demonstration projects is of course that the eventual need for carbon capture and storage on a global scale, including carbon-negative options such as biomass energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), becomes ever more certain.

It is clearly impossible to adequately cover this wealth of new R&D work in a single revised volume, and the aim, as in the first edition, has been to demonstrate the breadth of the various subjects covered with sufficient detail in selected areas to encourage further exploration by the reader. The proceedings of the biennial Greenhouse Gas Technology Conferences would be a good place to start such further enquiry, all papers being available online (Open Access) in the journal Energy Procedia.

The book is presented in five parts, dealing in turn with fundamentals, capture, storage/utilization and monitoring, transportation, and information resources.

The three chapters of Part I establish some fundamentals.  Chapter 1 describes the global carbon cycle and outlines the perturbing impact of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions on carbon fluxes and sinks. In  Chapter 2 a brief initial overview of CCSU technologies is given, taking each of the main industrial sources of carbon emissions as the starting point. Since capture from power generation plants will be the major focus of early implementation,  Chapter 3 provides a comprehensive introduction to fossil fueled power generation technologies. The emphasis here is on the current state of the art and on systems under development that are likely to be deployed during the next 50-years—the period in which we can expect CCSU technologies to mature.

With these foundations established, Part II provides a more detailed description of carbon capture technologies. The first two chapters are written from an industry perspective, for the power industry ( Chapter 4) and other industries ( Chapter 5), and the next five chapters from a technology perspective, covering absorption, adsorption, membrane, low temperature and distillation, and mineral carbonation technologies.

Part III then addresses CO₂ storage and monitoring, and CO₂ utilization. Chapters 11 to 16 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 provide a discussion, much expanded from the first edition, of the wide range of features, events, and processes (geological, geomechanical, hydrodynamic, geochemical, etc.) that influence geological storage.  Chapter 17 draws these threads together and looks at saline aquifer storage from a project operator’s perspective, starting with the assessment of potential storage sites, through storage planning to operations and abandonment. Other geological storage options, such as CO₂-enhanced oil recovery (EOR), are covered in  Chapter 18, while  Chapter 19 provides an overview of the technologies such as 4D seismic for monitoring geological storage operations. Examples and case studies from a range of storage projects are included to ground the discussion in practical experience. The potential for CO₂ storage in the oceans and in terrestrial ecosystems is discussed in Chapters 20 and 21 Chapter 20 Chapter 21, and the concluding chapter in Part III describes the increasingly broad field of CO₂ utilization, including the recent advances in artificial photosynthesis.

The transportation of CO₂ between capture and storage sites, either by pipeline infrastructure or by marine transport, is covered in Part IV.

The book concludes in Part V with a compendium of information resources, including units and conversion factors, a list of CCSU related acronyms, and a glossary of some of the key technical terms encountered.

Each chapter includes a selected list of references, many freely available online, that are chosen to provide a lead-in for further study. An effective strategy to track subsequent work in a particular area is to use the “Cited by …” link that appears in the scholarly search function of a popular search engine. The current revision has benefited from input from a number of readers, including educators using the book as a key text in CCSU related courses. Further comments, suggestions, or other feedback from readers will continue to be most welcome; please send them to ccst2010@gmail.com.

While the focus of this book is on the technical aspects of CCSU, many other factors will play a pivotal role in determining the extent to which these technologies are eventually deployed—chief among them being costs. Apart from some general indications of estimated or target costs of some CCSU options, this book avoids any analysis of the cost of implementation of the various technologies discussed. The capital and operating costs and the economics of individual projects will be highly case-dependent, with exchange rate volatility further complicating any general analysis. Future reductions in the costs and energy requirements of these technologies can also be expected, pending the outcome of ongoing R&D efforts and the learning from early demonstration projects.

For a limited time you can read Chapter 2 Overview of carbon capture and storage on ScienceDirect.

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Carbon Capture and Storage

• Provides all-inclusive and authoritative coverage of the major technologies under consideration for carbon capture and storage
• Presents information in an approachable format, for those with a scientific or engineering background, as well as non-specialists
• Includes a new Part III dedicated to geological storage of carbon dioxide, covering this topic in much more depth (9 chapters compared to 1 in the first edition)
• Features revisions and updates to all chapters
• Includes new sections or expanded content on: chemical looping/calcium looping; life-cycle GHG assessment of CCS technologies; non-power industries (e.g. including pulp/paper alongside ones already covered); carbon negative technologies (e.g. BECCS); gas-fired power plants; biomass and waste co-firing; and hydrate-based capture

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