Imperial College has the country’s largest carbon capture and storage (CCS) research program, with over 30 staff involved in CCS related activity. IC4S is a collaboration of these experts helping to develop collaborations and projects across campus and departments. We are also members of the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute Ltd (GCCSI).
Imperial researchers are very active in the UK CCS Research Centre. The UKCCSRC thematic champions for reservoir engineering (Prof Martin Blunt) industrial CCS (Dr Paul Fennell), systems (Prof Nilay Shah) and CO2 properties (Prof Martin Trusler). Imperial College are also part of EU collaborative programmes CO2 GeoNet and the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) sub-group for CCS.
Imperial’s Chemical Engineering Department have a recently refurbished pilot CO2 capture plant based within their Discovery Space.
Imperial also host the Qatar Carbonates and Carbon Storage Research Centre (split over the Departments of Earth Science and Engineering and Chemical Engineering), one of the largest industry funded CCS programmes ($70M over 10 years) aimed at improving our understanding of middle east carbonate reservoir complexes and our fundamental knowledge concerning carbon dioxide behaviour in the subsurface.
Imperial’s Sustainable Gas Institute also has CCS as a major thematic area under investigation.
CCS is a significant technologically ready tool for de-carbonising our current and future power and industrial sectors. A separate research network explores this aspect in more detial - Clean Fossil and Bioenergy Research Group - CleanFaB.
The college-wide research effort, in conjunction with Energy Futures Lab and The Grantham Institute aims at an integrated approach to carbon capture and storage, from capture, through transport to geological storage, but with an overarching systems approach to ensure a coherent research effort. In addition, we are involved the analysis of legal and regulatory issues.