Spring Conference 2022 ECR blog series #2- highlights from the conference

As part of our Spring Conference ECR blog series, Kranthi Jonnalagadda shares his experience of the UKCCSRC Spring Conference.

What a useful CCS conference!!

Wednesday 20 April

On a nippy morning at 8:00 AM, my colleague and I stepped out of the train station into  sunny Sheffield. We were going to attend the UKCCSRC annual conference  aimed building capacity for carbon capture deployment. It was our first face to face conference in more than two years and we were happy to be  going.

Our first agenda for the conference was to visit the Translational Energy Research centre (TERC).  I was on a  waiting list and my colleague hadn’t even booked to visit the TERC.  But we both just decided to turnup.  As it turned out, the organizing team was very accommodative and let us get onto the bus to visit the TERC . It was so nice of them.

At the TERC, we saw a carbon capture facility with two giant packed bed columns for capturing carbon dioxide and the gas feed system. Also we saw a hydrogen generation and fuel cell research facility. It helped me to understand the role that carbon capture can play in a hydrogen economy.  Everyone around us was excited to the research facilities, to see  process flow diagrams come to life.

Later in the afternoon, there were plenary and parallel sessions which was generously punctuated with coffee breaks. I attended the sessions on storage and was particularly charmed to see the quality of research that is being done on storage. Here were the best minds using all their capabilities to deliver carbon capture at scale  and to ensure that all the remaining loose strings are tied up.  After the poster session, we had a most marvellous dinner at the Firth Court to wrap up day one.  The conference was only half done but we were excited about all the things we learnt.

Thursday 21 April

On the second day, I attended parallel session 2B. First up was Allison Schapp who presented their work on monitoring  offshore CO₂ storage. It was fascinating to hear  about their experiments with sensors mounted on Autonomous vehicles.  Next,  I presented our research work on recovering some of the cost of liquefaction of carbon dioxide. It was followed by a presentation by Julia Race who was researching the provoking question: who pays for ccs? In the end Stuart Gilfillan spoke about their work on CO₂ tapping in a field research station.

After the parallel session we had  a plenary session which introduced all the CO₂ clusters in the UK.  Before attending the conference, I had only a vague idea of clusters and this plenary session opened my eyes for all the research work and opportunities. The conference closed with a delightful lunch. We chatted to colleagues from other universities over sandwiches, deserts and coffee. It was a good learning and networking conference for which I thank UKCCSRC.