As of September 30, 2016, the Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies program at MIT has closed. The website is being kept online as a reference but will not be updated.

Cranfield Fact Sheet: Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage Project

Company/Alliance: SECARB [Primary sponsors: DOE/NETL & SSEB. Secondary Sponsors: Texas Bureau of Economic Geology, Denbury Resources, Advanced Resources International (ARI), Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and University of Alabama.]

Location: Cranfield Oil Field, Natchez, Mississippi, USA

Start Date: April 2009

End date: January 2015

Size: 1.5 Mt/yr. Total burried 5.37 Mt/CO2.

CO2 Source: Natural source: Jackson Dome (The CO2 is supplied by Denbury Resources)

Storage: Saline reservoir, Tuscaloosa Sandstone Formation, down dip of the mature Cranfield Oil Field

Motivation/Economics:

Total field project cost $94 million; DOE share $65 million

Comments:

Injection began in April 2009, and in April 2010, the SECARB Phase III Early Test team verified the injection of two million tonnes of CO2. At project completion in January 2015, 5,371,643 metric tons had been sucessfully stored. The three research wells were safely plugged and abandoned in accordance with the Mississippi Oil and Gas Board rules in April 2015. Denbury’s commercial operations will continue.

The Cranfield project is part of the SECARB Phase III project. SECARB Phase III is being conducted in 2 parts. The Cranfield project is first "Early Test" and the Citronelle project is the second part or "Anthropogenic Test".

The Cranfield project was originally scheduled for 18 months of operation at 40,000 tons/day and a 1.5 Million ton target. This target was reached in the Spring 2011. Due to the sucess of the project, injection and monitoring is continued until January 2015.

The CO2 is is from a natural source (Jackson Dome) near Jackson, Mississippi and delivered by a Denbury Resources CO2 pipeline.

The Tuscaloosa Formation is a 15 meter thick heterogeneous fluvial sandstone located at 300 meters depth. It is a widespread formation across the region. This test is to test the capacity of the Tuscaloosa formation to hold large volumes of anthropogenic CO2. After the completion of the Early Test, SECARB is now undergoing monitoring of the CO2 as to how it migrates in the subsurface. To date there has been no sign of leakage of CO2 to the subsurface.

Deliverables:

Drilling operations began in 2008.

Successfully stored 3.5 million tons of CO2 by 2012.

Concluded operations in January 2015 with 5,371,643 metric tons sucessfully stored.

Monitoring the injected CO2 is now underway and there is no sign of leakage to date.

Project Link: Gulf Coast Carbon Center website

Other Sources and Press Releases:

Monitoring a large-volume injection at Cranfield, Mississippi—Project design and recommendations S.Hovorka et al. October 2013.
SECARB Coal Group website
Cranfield
DOE Cranfield fact sheet [PDF]
Summary of Field Test Site and Operations, SECARB report [PDF]
Cranfield Large Scale CO2 Injection; Monitoring 3.5 Million Tons (May 2012)
Cranfield Phase II Modeling [PDF] (March 2011)
Underground CO2 storage study to begin (October 2007)
University of Texas to Begin First Long-Term Underground CO2 Storage Test in US (October 2007)
Bureau of Economic Geology Receives $38 Million for First Large-Scale U.S. Test Storing Carbon Dioxide Underground (October 2007)