CO₂ReMoVe Research on CO₂ Monitoring and Verification

Begin of project: March 1, 2006

End of project: February 28, 2012

Status of project: February 28, 2012

The integrated project CO₂ReMoVe is funded by the European Union and a consortium of industry partners. Targets of this project are to improve existing and develop innovative monitoring and verification techniques and to test and apply those at different CO₂ storage sites.

Oceanographic buoy carrying a CO2 monitoring system Source: OGS, Trieste

BGR is involved in the work package „Innovative monitoring tool and method development“, developing systems for the detection, localisation and quantification of free CO₂ emanations, i.e. CO₂ bubble streams, at the lake or sea floors.

The first systems for offshore surface leakage monitoring were derived from a prototype that was originally designed for monitoring of a mud volcano in Azerbaijan. From this, two different new tools were established:
i) a buoy-mounted monitoring system with a funnel on the seafloor to collect the gas;
ii) a fully submersed autonomous system, i.e. with underwater electronics and sensors.

Prototype tests under laboratory and field conditions, i.e. tests on natural submarine gas vents, have demonstrated the capabilities and robustness of the systems and have lead to further system optimisation.

Remotely operated vehicle (VideoRay Pro 3 XE Micro-ROV) equipped with sensor prototypes Source: BGR

However, information gathered with stationary systems is limited to the area directly covered by the funnels and extrapolation of fluxes and concentrations to surrounding areas is often not feasible. Therefore, current work focuses on the development of mobile systems. Such mobile systems, e.g., carried by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), allow detection of a leakage site as well as measuring/sampling directly at the emanation site. First tests with these ROV-mounted systems were successfully performed on naturally occuring gas emanations in Laacher See in spring 2010.

Project homepage: www.co2remove.eu

Literature:

BGR - Final Report

Partner:

La Sapienza University of Rome and OGS, Trieste

Promotion / document number:

EU, 6. Framework programme