LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa., May 10, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Air Products (NYSE: APD) today celebrated the successful operation of a United States Department of Energy (DOE) Demonstration Project that will capture approximately one million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) in an enhanced oil recovery project in which DOE anticipates an additional estimated 1.6-3.1 million barrels of oil to be produced annually from the CO2 injection. This unprecedented achievement comes by way of an Air Products innovative technology, is the first-of-its-kind operating at such a large scale, and has not been accomplished anywhere else in the United States.
Described by the DOE as a milestone in its Industrial Carbon Capture and Storage (ICCS) program, Air Products’ carbon capture project in Port Arthur, Texas recovers and purifies the CO2, all of which is then transported in its gaseous state by Air Products via a pipeline owned by Denbury Green Pipeline-Texas, LLC for injection into the Denbury Onshore operated West Hastings Unit, an enhanced oil recovery project in Texas.
“Air Products is very proud to celebrate this Demonstration Project’s success. When you define projects that could be a model of sustainability, it doesn’t get much better than this effort in taking a vented greenhouse gas and capturing it, cleaning it up, and sequestering it in the process of increasing the output of a valuable domestic natural resource like crude oil,” said Jeff Byrne, vice president and general manager – Tonnage Gases at Air Products.
“We have worked hard to build our reputation for successfully executing large scale industrial projects and bringing them onstream, on time and budget. We did just that, here at Port Arthur, using a new patent-protected technology that we developed. At the same time, this novel and technology-leading Demonstration Project would not have been achievable without the support and involvement of DOE,” he said.
Air Products designed, constructed, and is now operating the state-of-the-art system to capture CO2 from its steam methane reformers (SMR) located within the Valero Port Arthur Refinery. The CO2 removal technology was retrofitted to the SMRs, which produce hydrogen to assist in the making of cleaner burning transportation fuels by refinery customers on Air Products’ Gulf Coast hydrogen pipeline network.
Hydrogen is widely used in petroleum refining processes to remove impurities found in crude oil such as sulfur, olefins and aromatics to meet product fuels specifications.
Incidentally, Air Products’ Gulf Coast hydrogen plant and pipeline supply network is the world’s largest system of its kind. The pipeline stretches from the Houston Ship Channel in Texas to New Orleans, Louisiana. The 600-mile pipeline span is fed by over 20 Air Products’ hydrogen production facilities and provides over 1.2 billion cubic feet of hydrogen per day to refinery and petrochemical customers.
DOE had previously stated that, “This event marks a milestone in DOE’s ICCS program: progressing beyond research and development to a demonstration scale that can be readily replicated and deployed into commercial practice within the industry. Goals of the ICCS program are to mitigate climate change through carbon capture, utilization and storage; create jobs; and position the United States as a world leader in carbon-capture technologies.”
Source: Air Products
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