The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has collaborated with industry in cost-sharing arrangements to advance the next generation of technologies that will capture carbon from industrial sources and either store or beneficially re-use them. Some of these technologies have advanced to a scale that can be readily replicated and deployed into industry.

Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) has made significant progress in advancing carbon capture and storage technologies and started large-scale geological storage of carbon in April 2017. NETL manages the ADM project. Additional project partners include Schlumberger Carbon Services, Illinois State Geological Survey, and Richland Community College.

The overall objective of the ADM project is to develop and deploy an integrated system for collecting carbon dioxide from an ethanol production plant and geologically storing it in a deep underground sandstone reservoir. The carbon dioxide produced is a byproduct from processing corn into fuel-grade ethanol at the ADM ethanol plant in Decatur, Ill.

The captured carbon is stored in the Mt. Simon Sandstone, a prolific saline reservoir in the Illinois Basin. Geological features of this reservoir (porosity and permeability) make it a favorable location for carbon storage, and the ADM project can store approximately one million tons of carbon dioxide per year at depths of approximately 7,000 feet. Researchers estimate that the sandstone formation can potentially store more than 250 million tons of carbon in the Illinois Basin region.

The ADM project offers a unique opportunity to advance important energy technologies. To date, the ADM facility has successfully operated cost-effective carbon capture, compression, dehydration, and injection technologies. The project is also testing cutting-edge technologies for intelligent monitoring in the deep verification well. In addition, scientific and engineering data gathered from this project will also add to the understanding of large-scale carbon storage in saline formations, and help facilitate exploration of long-term carbon utilization options such as enhanced oil recovery in the Southern Illinois Basin. Together, efforts from the ADM project will help bolster domestic fossil fuel production and support America’s energy dominance.