ZeroGen today announced it has started drilling in the Northern Denison Trough in Central Queensland to find reservoirs of suitable size to safely store carbon dioxide (CO2) for the clean coal project.
ZeroGen Project Manager Chris Wheeler said the project had started the second stage of its drilling program as part of its feasibility study into clean coal.
"Clean coal technologies offer a solution to climate change through helping meet Australia’s rapidly increasing energy demands whilst reducing greenhouse gas emissions," Mr Wheeler said.
"The essence of all clean coal technologies is the ability to safely capture, transport, inject and store CO2.
"The first stage of ZeroGen’s drilling program confirmed that deep underground reservoirs in the Northern Denison Trough are suitable to safely store CO2.
"The Northern Denison Trough is a geologic formation that has trapped natural gas, including CO2, for millions of years.
"ZeroGen has now started drilling to locate specific reservoirs that have enough capacity to safely store CO2 for the project."
Mr Wheeler said demonstration projects were essential in achieving the rapid uptake of clean coal technologies.
"The value of the ZeroGen project is that it will generate knowledge and learnings to ‘de-risk’ clean coal technologies and accelerate the uptake of large-scale clean coal plants.
"The technology will provide reliable baseload power whilst making deep cuts in CO2 into a carbon-constrained future."
The ZeroGen project will demonstrate technology that has the potential to capture up to 75 percent of CO2 emissions in the demonstration project, and up to 90 percent in full-scale plants.
The project aims to integrate coal gasification (a process which converts coal into a gas to generate power) with carbon capture and storage (a process of capturing, transporting, injecting and storing CO2) to produce electricity with low CO2 emissions.
The proposed power plant will be located next to the Stanwell Power Station near Rockhampton. The CO2 will be captured at the site and transported approximately 220kms by pipeline for safe storage in deep underground reservoirs in the Northern Denison Trough.
The feasibility study is expected to be completed by late 2008. Construction of the power plant and pipeline is planned for completion by late 2011, with the demonstration plant becoming operational shortly thereafter.
ZeroGen is currently owned by the Queensland Government. Stanwell Corporation Limited is undertaking the feasibility study.
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