Ethanol Carbon Sequestration Plant Holds Lessons for Coal

The New York Times
By CHRISTA MARSHALL of ClimateWire
Published: September 12, 2011

A leading agriculture company is about to put the United States on the map with the world's biggest carbon sequestration projects.

In coming months, Archer Daniels Midland will ramp up construction on an initiative to grab carbon dioxide emitted from an ethanol facility and inject the gas underground. The Department of Energy announced the project's groundbreaking at the company's facility in Decatur, Ill., in late August.

When combined with a separate, related sequestration project starting this fall on the same corn processing plant, the initiative will pump more industrially captured carbon dioxide underneath the earth for permanent storage in deep saline rock reservoirs than ever has been attempted in the United States. While the project is focused on ethanol, the company says it is optimistic that its efforts will pave the way to try similar emission controls for fossil fuels like coal.

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