Engineers and environmentalists around the world are keeping an eye on Decatur, Ill., where the Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium (MGSC) has begun injecting dense-phase carbon dioxide into a porous rock layer more than a mile below the earth's surface. The methodology could provide a means for point sources of CO2 throughout the 60,000-sq-mile Illinois Basin, including more than 100 fossil-fuel-burning powerplants, to improve their environmental friendliness, given concerns about the contributions of CO2 emissions to global climate change.
But the project will take an even more interesting turn in a little more than a year, when crews complete a second injection well, just ¾ mile from the first, in the Mount Simon Sandstone layer that underlies much of Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. Intensive subterranean and surface instrumentation will allow scientists to monitor the ways in which two injection streams interact in close proximity to one another, a significant accomplishment, given that carbon-storage projects may require several wells to capture the volume of CO2 produced by powerplants or other point sources.
