Capture activities at CO2CRC’s Otway National Research Facility

The main objective of the current capture R&D at Otway Research Facility in Victoria, Australia is to facilitate field testing and evaluation of the state-of-the-art CO2CRC membrane and adsorption technologies for separation of CO2 during real natural gas (NG) processing. The ultimate goal is to develop robust and efficient capture technologies for high CO2 content NG separation at high pressure over a range of adjusted CO2 concentrations mimicking various gas field conditions. A skid mounted fully automated capture rig comprising of both the technologies has been in operation since early 2017 implementing a research plan developed by The University of Melbourne (UOM) and UNSW Australia. The testing plan has been going forward in stage campaigns, started first with commercial materials followed by testing new innovative materials which will then be tested against impurities, like H2S, one of the worst impurities found in natural gas production. This would facilitate firstly to develop new gas fields to recover methane, which is uneconomical with currently available technologies and at the same time to open up a cost-effective way of CCS implementation in gas processing fields.