On Tuesday and Wednesday, January 28th and 29th, 2020, GCCC co-hosted the 5th University of Texas Conference on Carbon Capture and Storage (UTCCS-5) with the Texas Carbon Management Program (TxCMP).
First-year GCCC master’s students introduce themselves during Ramon Trevino’s geologic characterization talk. 
Rachel Lim, a postdoc at the Stan Richard School of Advertising & Public Relations, gives an update on stakeholder perceptions in the GoMCarb project area.
More than 100 participants joined the UTCCS-5 to learn about the latest updates from the University of Texas at Austin experts on carbon capture and storage.
Representatives from CCS groups at Battelle, Baker Hughes, BHP, BP, ExxonMobil, JX Nippon (Petra Nova), Shell, Oxy, Total, Trimeric, USGS, DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, Environmental Defense Fund, Clean Air Task Force, and others attended.
Participants joined either the carbon capture track organized by the UT Chemical Engineering Department and Dr. Gary Rochelle. Or the geological storage track, organized by GCCC. The storage track focused largely on the geological applications, infrastructure, and stakeholder relations within the CCS process.
The first day of the storage track was dedicated to presenting project updates on GCCC’s 5-year Big Plan which describes our research group’s aspirations for the forward-looking direction of cutting-edge research, guided by the need to upscale CCS to a commercial level. GoMCarb results were also shared. The day ended with a tour of the carbon capture demonstration plant on the UT Austin’s J.J. Pickle Research Campus (photos below).
During the second day, presentations continued, working through the various tasks in the Big Plan. Afterward, a couple of hours were devoted to closed session discussions with GCCC Industrial Associates, answering questions and receiving feedback on what remains ahead in research in order to push CCS towards wide adoption within energy industries.
The University of Texas Conference on Carbon Capture and Storage takes place every other year in conjunction with the biannual GCCC Industrial Associates meeting. This is the fifth iteration of the conference.
View a list of the presenters and their talks below.
Participants were split into groups and led to the demonstration carbon capture plant on the U.T. Pickle Research Campus, led by Dr. Gary Rochelle of the Texas Carbon Management Program.
The smaller, yet functional, capture system model is used for chemical experiments.
Dr. Rochelle points to the model carbon capture plant’s various components. In the foreground is “packing” that facilitates carbon dioxide to be absorbed.
Dr. Rochelle points to the real-time monitoring of each process and its output within the capture system.
Presentations
Contact research program coordinator, Emily Moskal (emily.moskal@beg.utexas.edu), for access to the presentation slides.
Day 1, Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Welcome, Gary Rochelle and Susan Hovorka
Plenary: Meeting the Dual Challenge, Jane Stricker and Susan Blevins
Leslie Savage, Texas Regulatory Environment for CCS
Benjamin Heard, Gulf Coast Sequestration
Ramon Trevino and Alex Bump, Progress in the Gulf of Mexico
Tip Meckel, Addressing Subsurface Aspect of Large-Scale CCS
Susan Hovorka, Cost of Characterization to Prepare for Permitting
Katherine Romanak, International Engagement
Rachel Lim, Stakeholder Challenges and Perspectives
Emily Moskal, Dialogue in the CCUS Ecosystem
Seyyed Hosseini, GCCC New Projects
Darshan Sachde, Overview of CO2 Capture, Transport, and Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico
Katherine Romanak, Environmental Field Studies
Tip Meckel, Status and Plans for Offshore Monitoring
Ramon Gil-Egui and Vanessa Nunez-Lopez, The Impact of 45Q and Stacked Storage in the CO2-EOR Sustainability
Vanessa Nunez-Lopez, Fluid Flow Research in Collaboration with Imperial College London
Sahar Bakhshian, Prediction of CO2 Footprint: A Hybrid Pore-Scale Simulation and Analytical Modeling
Varun Rai, CCS…It’s Time!
Day 2, Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Larry Lake, The Effect of Compressibility and Boundaries on Displacement Stability
Shayan Tavassoli, CO2 Storage in Gulf Coast Saline Aquifers and Pilot Case Study of Wellbore Leakage Mitigation for CO2 Storage Projects
Xiaojin Zheng, Zhuang Sun, D. Nicolas Espinoza, Uniaxial Strain Unloading Compressibility of Frio Sand: Implications on Reservoir Pressure Management for CO2 Storage
Prasanna Krishnamurthy, CO2 Migration and Trapping in Heterogeneous Porous Media
Seyyed Hosseini, Analytical Models of Plume Migration and Stabilization
Jiro Tanaka, Tomakomai CCS Demonstration Project: Project Update
Susan Hovorka, Monitoring Needs: Well Surveillance and Plume Stabilization
Susan Hovorka Presenting Curt Oldenburg and Lehua Pan’s Work, Mechanistic Modeling of CO2 Leakage into the Water Column from Offshore CO2 Wells or Pipelines
Susan Hovorka, Discussion with Sponsors