SOCORRO, N.M. – New Mexico Tech will coordinate a project to inject million of tons of carbon dioxide into a sandstone formation that stretches from Colorado to Wyoming, removing the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.
The U.S. Department of Energy this week announced three projects across the nation to sequester carbon, or store it underground.
New Mexico Tech will head the Southwest Regional Partnership for Carbon Sequestration, which will inject carbon dioxide into the Entrada formation. The partnership includes New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Oklahoma and Kansas and parts of Texas, Arizona and Wyoming.
The U.N.-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in a report this spring, said technology such as hydrogen-powered fuel cells, advanced hybrid and electric vehicles and carbon sequestration will become more commercially feasible.
The Energy Department said the formations being tested by the regional partnerships are the most promising geologic basins in the nation, and together they have the potential to store more than 100 years of carbon dioxide emissions from major sources in North America.
The project will test the limits of injection and demonstrate the integrity of the cap rock to trap the gas, the DOE said. The information will be used to evaluate locations around the region where future power plants are being considered.
“This is something that the whole world is looking at, this potential to be able to capture and sequester carbon,” said Vince Matthews, director of the Colorado Geological Survey.
The Raton basin, in Huerfano County, seems the likeliest spot because it has a deep saltwater aquifer and a natural supply of carbon dioxide, Matthews said. “We have an ideal location in which to put it from a variety of standpoints,” he said. “And the formation that we would be putting it into is widespread throughout the Rocky Mountains, so the results here would be applicable here to the rest of the Rockies.”
Denver Post staff writer Steve Lipsher contributed to this report.
