China's first million-ton low-concentration CCUS full-chain demonstration project started in Dongying, Shandong

China News Service, Dongying, Shandong, October 16 (Zhou Yiwei) China's first million-ton low-concentration CCUS (carbon dioxide capture, utilization and storage) full-chain demonstration project started construction on the 16th at Sinopec's Shengli Oilfield in Dongying, Shandong.

The "Qilu Petrochemical-Shengli Oilfield Million-ton CCUS Project" is China's first million-ton CCUS project. It mainly captures high-concentration tail gas emitted by coal-to-hydrogen production units, with a carbon dioxide content of about 90%. Since it was put into operation in August 2022, the project has stored a total of 1.4 billion standard cubic meters of carbon dioxide and increased crude oil recovery by more than 15 percentage points. At present, the daily oil production of the million-ton CCUS demonstration zone of Qilu Petrochemical-Shengli Oilfield has increased from 220 tons to 525 tons. It has also simultaneously constructed China's first 100-kilometer long-distance carbon dioxide pipeline, forming a complete carbon emission reduction industry chain.

On October 16, China’s first million-ton low-concentration CCUS (carbon dioxide capture, utilization and storage) full-chain demonstration project started construction in Sinopec’s Shengli Oilfield in Dongying, Shandong. The picture shows the construction site of the pile foundation. Photo by Ding Gang

After achieving industrial breakthroughs in high-concentration gas source capture, Shengli Oilfield shifted its focus to low-concentration coal-fired flue gas that is more difficult to capture and has a larger emission scale. The carbon dioxide concentration of this type of flue gas is only 12% to 15%, and it also contains impurities such as sulfur and nitrogen oxides, making it significantly more difficult to capture.

After hard work, Shengli Oilfield adopted independently developed new absorbents and energy-saving regeneration processes to achieve a capture rate of over 90%, a product purity of over 99.5%, and a CO2 capture heat consumption of less than 2.0 GJ per ton, reaching the internationally leading level and laying a solid foundation for the construction of low-concentration CCUS projects.

The million-ton low-concentration CCUS demonstration project started this time is expected to be completed and put into operation by the end of 2028. The captured carbon dioxide will be injected into different types of reservoirs such as beach bar sand, turbidite and shale oil through more than 70 gas injection wells. The project is simultaneously equipped with a "wind power + energy storage + direct connection line + CCUS capture" source, grid and load storage integrated system. It plans to have 13 wind turbines with a total installed capacity of 98.8 MW and an annual green power generation of 217 million kWh. It directly supplies carbon capture devices to achieve a closed-loop model of "direct connection of green power and low carbon capture". This model is the first of its kind in China.