Carbon dioxide Sequestration Revisited

Artist visualization of CO2 sequestration of CO2 from a coal fired power plant into brine deep below the ground

Just read an article on Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN) that Dow Chemicals and Air Products have signed separate agreements to capture and sequester CO2 emitted from coal fired power plants in US and Germany, respectively.
Dow's proposed agreement is with Alstom for a pilot plant to be built at South Charleston W.Va. They are proposing about 1800 tons/yr of CO2 capture from the flue gases of a coal fired boiler. The removal technology here is an amine based CO2 removal post capture method.
The Air Products project is Germany is with the Swedish utility company Vattenfall AB. Sequestration options are being explored currently. More details can be found in the source article [Link]. New findings in the the sequestration of CO2 indicate that substantial amount of underground CO2 may remain dissolved in deep formation brine, rather than getting fixed into mineral carbonates, as previously believed.
Sources
C&EN
Nature

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Dow Methane Challenge

Dow Chemical recently announced that academic teams led by Northwestern University and Cardiff University, Wales were selected for $6.4 million in grants over 3 years to fund research on the direct conversion of methane to olefins and olefin precursors. Currently, these compounds are made via the syngas (CO+H2) route. The need to utilize stranded gas reserves and provide alternate sources of petrochemical precursors drives this research. Methane is a tough nut to crack, because of the stability provided by the C-H bonds. Low temperature methane oxidation is therefore considered a "grand challenge".

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