IEAGHG Summer School 2018

The 12th IEAGHG Summer School, hosted by the Norwegian CCS Research Council, took place in June 2018 in Trondheim. This year, UKCCSRC provided financial support to PhD students Pooya Hoseinpoori (Imperial College London), Hana Mandova (University of Leeds) and Kelachi Omehia (University of Sheffield) to attend and meet 60 students and over 20 experts from all around the world working on CCS. Across the packed 5 days, students were taught a wide range of aspects related to the CCS deployment and obtained the most recent information available in each field. In addition, the students had a chance to network, present their work, and discuss potential career choices in the field of CCS after they finish their PhDs.

Tim Dixon from IEAGHG officially starting the summer school.

Historical buildings in Trondheim, Norway.

The programme started already on Sunday evening by welcome reception and dinner, where we had a first chance to meet other students. The following morning, the full-on schedule began. The first speakers, Beth Hardy and Tim Dixon, gave an overview on the importance of CCS as a climate change mitigation strategy and put its deployment into context. Day 1 then followed with 9 other presentations on CO₂ storage, capture as well as legislation and policies which are currently supporting or holding back CCS application in the large scale. At the end of the day, we were introduced into our groups and started working on the specific research question we were assigned to answer.

Presentation by Mike Monea from International CCS Knowledge Centre on Enhanced Oil Recovery, during which he explained opportunities for CO₂ storage as part of oil extraction.

Separation of students into groups and introduction of their research topics.

Day 2, Tuesday, started with a session on different aspects of CO₂ storage from reservoir modelling to deep and shallow monitoring. The morning session continued by Niall Mac Dowel and Sigmund Storset, who discussed CO₂ utilization, BECCS and the potential of H₂ + CCS. The afternoon lectures focused on non-technical issues around CCS such as health and safety (presented by Kaare Helle), economics and financing of CCS (presented by Per Sanberg) and international legal and regulatory carbon accounting (presented by Tim Dixon). Norm Sakuta then lead the last session of the day, which was the communication skill workshop and aimed to teach students effective communication of technical issues and how to address general public concerns on CCS. The highlight of the busy day was a nice traditional Nordic dinner planned in the historical Munkulmen Island, a tiny Island 1.3km offshore from Trondheim.

Students explaining a CO₂ storage concept using infographics during a workshop on public communication and engagement, led by Norm Sacuta and Hilary Olsan.

Boat trip to Munklholmen island and tour around and traditional Nordic dinner.

With most of us still full from the amazing dinner the night before, the Wednesday sessions began with a focus on CO₂ storage. During the 3rd day, we also had a chance to visit SINTEF CO₂ Laboratory at Triller to see SINTEF’s chemical looping combustion test facilities and their high equipped test facilities for post-combustion CO₂ technologies. SINTEF has constructed these test facilities for accurate measurements of different key process variables and uses the results as input parameters to its simulation tool CO₂SIM. During the second part of the day, we also visited the NTNU /SINTEF laboratories at the NTNU campus and had a unique chance to see their cutting-edge research facilities that makes SINTEF one of the global leading research centres on CCS. The last program of the 3rd day was an interesting monitoring game designed by Katherine Romanak from University of Texas. During the game, we were supposed to perform monitoring of an injection well with the least possible cost and put in practice what we have learnt during different lectures on geological storage of CO₂.

Monitoring activity led Katherine Romanak demonstrating the balance of detailed monitoring of CO₂ storage reservoirs and costs.

On Thursday, we started the programme with talks on direct air capture (by Marco Mazzotti), pipeline transport (by Svend Tollak Munkejord) and the perspective of CCS in developing countries, focusing specifically on Africa (by Joseph Essandoh-Yeddu). After lunch, talks about the environmental impacts of CO₂ capture and storage techniques by speakers from University of Texas and Gassnova were taking place as well as a lecture from the Deputy Director General of the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, Egil Meisingset. Thursday evening was then a last chance for students to finalise their presentations on the assigned questions.

Preparation of presentation by group 2 to answer question: “Does CO₂-EOR have a place in the CCS chain?”

Friday was the presentation day! Presentations on:

• The role of CCS in the ‘unburnable carbon’ issue;
• The place of CO₂ EOR in the CCS chain;
• CCS as a viable option for developing countries;
• CCS being mandatory in developed countries;
• The reasons behind Norway being able to set up a series of regionally integrated CCS clusters and hubs;
• The importance of CCS within sustainable, low-carbon hydrogen economy,

were given by the corresponding groups of students. After lunch, PhD students had a chance to present their work during a poster session, which was then followed by a talk by Anne Steenstrup-Duch (SINTEF) on how to effectively communicate our research and the importance of different types of social media. The event finished by awards dinner, where researchers from the UK – Pooya Hoseinpoori (Imperial College London) and Charlotte Mitchell (University of Edinburg) – received the best student and best poster awards, respectively.  

Presentation by students on final day.

This way, Pooya, Hana and Kelachi would like to thank IEAGHG for the amazing opportunity to participate in the summer school and UKCCSRC for the travel fund granted to be able to attend this highly educational event.

Pooya Hoseinpoori (left), Kelachi Omehia (centre) Hana Mandova (right)