Carbon Dioxide Geosequestration in Coal

• Abbas El-Zein
• Dr Pathegama Ranjith, Dr Jayantha Kodikara, Assoc Prof Malek Bouazza at Monash University; Australia
• Dr SX Choi at CSIRO Petroleum Resources
• Assoc Prof David Airey at the University of Sydney).

One of the long-term options for mitigating climate change is injection of carbon dioxide in deep geological formations. Coal strata may be a suitable host because of its affinity to CO2, i.e. its ability to sorb it, and the release of methane that would offset geosequestration cost.

However, our understanding of the impact of CO2 on the properties of coal is still in its infancy owing to the complex structure of coal which include porosities of different orders of magnitude, and to the coupling between hydrological, mechanical, thermal and chemical processes at play.

The project, funded by an ARC Discovery grant jointly with the Geomechanics group at Monash University, conduct tri-axial and diffusion tests and develops new dual and multiple-porosity models for simulating the fate of injected CO2