Results, status and future activities of the coal-seq consortium

Abstract

The Coal-Seq consortium is a government-industry collaborative consortium with the objective of advancing industry’s understanding of complex coalbed methane and gas shale reservoir behavior in the presence of multicomponent gases via laboratory experiments, theoretical model development and field validation studies. This will allow primary recovery, enhanced recovery and CO2 sequestration operations to be commercially enhanced and/or economically deployed. The project was initially launched in 2000 as a U.S. Department of Energy sponsored investigation into CO2 sequestration in deep, unmineable coalseams. The initial project accomplished a number of important objectives, which mainly revolved around performing baseline experimental studies, documenting and analyzing existing field projects, and establishing a global network for technology exchange. To address serious limitations uncovered in our knowledge of reservoir behavior when CO2 is injected into coal, a second phase was initialized in 2005 as a government-industry collaborative consortium. While the detailed results from the consortium are proprietary, selected accomplishments from this phase have included the identification and/or development of new models for multi-component sorption and diffusion, laboratory studies of coal geomechanical and permeability behavior with CO2 injection, additional field validation studies, and continued global technology exchange. Further continuation of the consortium is currently being considered built upon the findings from Phase 2. Some of the topics that have been identified for investigation in Phase 3 are here exposed.