AN ordinary field in Nirranda South has become the centre of a multi-million-dollar Commonwealth experiment to help lower carbon emissions and save the planet from climate change.
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The federal government yesterday announced it would pump millions more into a carbon capture program based in the south-west, allowing new drilling to test if carbon can be successfully stored beneath the earth’s surface.
The agency behind the project, Co-operative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC), was handed a $51.6 million cheque to invest in a number of sites.
At least $23.6 million will be spent in Nirranda.
Federal Energy and Resources Minister Gary Gray flew in to the south-west yesterday to unveil the cash and support the election campaign of Wannon Labor candidate Michael Barling.
“The CO2CRC is adopting world-leading practices into the storage of CO2, that is the gas most responsible for changing the climate of our planet,” Mr Gray said.
“What we’re looking at is technology that has been worked on for over a decade and it’s at a point now where CO2CRC needs a large investment to ensure the science continues.”
The “subsurface laboratory” has been operating in Nirranda South since 2008 and has stored 65,000 tonnes of carbon in a depleted gas reserve.
However, researchers have shifted their focus to see if it can store smaller amounts of carbon in a disused aquifer and sandstone deposits.
Project manager Matthias Raab said carbon would be taken from the nearby power stations, including the coal-fired Hazelwood station in Gippsland.
“For this site it comes from the Buttress natural gas well, which has 80 per cent carbon dioxide and 20 per cent methane,” he said.
At least 20 per cent of the carbon gas would be absorbed into underground water, while the remainder would be permanently trapped into sandstone meaning little chance of it ever seeping back out of the earth, he said.
“Where it’s stored is in the pore space of the sandstone and a part of the carbon also disintegrates in the water under the pressure conditions,” he said.
Mr Gray also talked up the track record of the technology.
“It doesn’t go into the subsurface in a big balloon that might one day pop — that’s why the public confidence in this geo-technology is very important,” he said.
Dr Raab said international eyes were watching the project, which has the potential to slash carbon emissions from power stations.
CO2CRC is a co-operative company funded by major mining companies, universities and state governments.
