The Quest Carbon Capture and Storage Project captures and stores underground 1m tonnes of CO₂ emissions per year. The capture unit is located at the Scotford Upgrader in

Alberta, Canada Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

. The unit captures carbon dioxide produced from steam methane reformation to produce

hydrogen Hydrogen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol H and atomic number 1. It is the lightest and abundance of the chemical elements, most abundant chemical element in the universe, constituting about 75% of all baryon, normal matter ...

that is used to upgrade

bitumen Bitumen ( , ) is an immensely viscosity, viscous constituent of petroleum. Depending on its exact composition, it can be a sticky, black liquid or an apparently solid mass that behaves as a liquid over very large time scales. In American Engl ...

from

oil sands Oil sands are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. They are either loose sands, or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and water, soaked with bitumen (a dense and extremely viscous ...

into

synthetic crude oil Synthetic crude is the output from a bitumen/extra heavy oil upgrader facility used in connection with oil sand production. It may also refer to shale oil, an output from an oil shale pyrolysis. The properties of the synthetic crude depend on t ...

. Between 2015 and 2019, the facility captured 5 megatonnes out of the 7.5 megatonnes produced by the steam methane reformer for an average CO₂ capture efficiency of 67%. Carbon dioxide is only captured from the steam methane reformer at the Scotford Upgrader. Other sources of emissions at the facility are unabated.

Technology

Mined bitumen extracted from Alberta's oil sands is a heavy oil that needs an upgrading process before being delivered to

refineries A refinery is a production facility composed of a group of chemical engineering unit processes and unit operations refining certain materials or converting raw material into products of value. Types of refineries Different types of refineries a ...

and transformed into marketable products. The upgrading process is energy intensive and requires hydrogen that is produced from a steam methane reformer. Making hydrogen creates carbon dioxide that at Quest is captured and separated from nitrogen through an absorption amine technology process. Captured CO₂ is subsequently compressed into a supercritical fluid, then transported via pipeline for 64 km where CO₂ is stored two kilometers underground into a saline aquifer.

Current status

The project began capturing CO₂ on August 23, 2015. Quest Carbon Capture and Storage Project at Scotford has the capacity to capture approximately one-third of the CO₂ emissions from the

Scotford Upgrader The Shell Scotford Upgrader is an oilsand upgrader, a facility which processes crude bitumen from oil sands into a wide range of synthetic crude oils. The upgrader is owned by Athabasca Oil Sands Project (AOSP), a joint venture of Shell Canada, She ...

. The cumulative stored volume is expected to be greater than 27 million tonnes of CO₂ over the anticipated 25 year life of the Scotford Upgrader. The most recent report to the Government of Alberta was released in 2023. In that year, the facility injected 1,003 kilotonnes of CO₂ into three reservoirs and reported an average CO₂ capture efficiency ratio 75.2%.

References

{{Reflist Carbon capture and storage

Technology

Current status

See also

References