Can China Turn Carbon Capture into a Water Feature?

In an intriguing footnote to their historic climate deal this month, Chinese [Chairman] Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama called for demonstration of a hitherto obscure tweak to carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology that could simultaneously increase its carbon storage capacity and reduce its thirst for water.  Such an upgrade to CCS holds obvious attraction for China, which is the world's top carbon polluter and also faces severe water deficits, especially in the coal-rich north and west.

As the Union of Concerned Scientists puts it in its The Equation blog, “Cracking this nut … could be a huge issue for China.”

Obama and Xi's deal pledges joint funding for a project that would inject about 1 million tons per year of captured carbon dioxide deep underground and, in the process, produce approximately 1.4 million cubic meters of water annually.  One potential target is GreenGen, an advanced coal-fired generating plant in Tianjin that was explicitly designed as a CCS test bed. 

Such ‘enhanced water recovery’ can be understood as an extension of the CCS-based enhanced oil recovery that is financing installation of carbon capture equipment at several North American coal-fired power plants.  These include the upgraded coal generator in Estevan, Saskatchewan, that recently became the first coal plant to capture its CO2.  
Canadian utility SaskPower sells 1 million tons (1 megaton) of compressed CO2 to an aging oilfield nearby where it is pumped down into the oil-bearing formation to accelerate the upward flow of petroleum. 

If enhancing oil production is a revenue option for CCS, producing water with CCS is primarily about easing the storage of captured CO2 in deep saline aquifers.  Geologists see carbonating saline aquifers as the most likely storage target for CCS if it becomes a universal aspect of fossil fuel power generation.  Bringing up briny water in the process is not as lucrative as oil production, but offers some potentially significant benefits, starting with decreasing the pressure of the aquifer.

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