An international research team led by the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC) has finished a sequence of five carefully prepared tests which will assist with further carbon capture development.

CO2CRC chief executive Richard Aldous said the single well test conducted at Nirranda would be used for storage site appraisal in Australia and around the world.

He said several years of planning had gone into the project, which involved a high level of scientific rigour and engineering.

"The key achievement from these experiments has been the development of the world's first single well test, which can be used to evaluate the carbon dioxide storage capacity of saline storage reservoirs for carbon storage projects around the world," Dr Aldous said.

"It is essentially a very cost-effective way for large industrial carbon capture and storage projects to determine the potential quantity and security of carbon dioxide to be stored underground in a particular location.

"It has involved drilling and instrumenting a 1500 metre well, followed by a complex series of injections, extractions and sampling over several months - the team have successfully pulled off a remarkable series of sub-surface investigations that are right at the cutting edge of storage science research." Several international scientists participated in the initiative including representatives from the Lawrence Berkeley American Laboratory, Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources, Canada's Simon Fraser University and New Zealand's GNS Science.

The carbon storage site was established three years ago, with 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide stored underground within three months of the project becoming operational.