Sydney Symposium on Carbon Capture

The 2nd Sydney Symposium on Carbon Capture (S2C2) will be held at the University of Sydney this week from 16-18 October. Topics of discussion will include cleaner energies, global temperatures and climate change.

Dr Ali Abbas, symposium chair and director of the Laboratory for Multiscale Systems in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies, says carbon-based fossil fuel resources still account for more than 80% of the world’s primary energy consumption.

“Electricity generation from coal-fired power plants is a major source of CO₂ emissions and this makes power plants the first point of interest for implementation of low-emissions technologies, like carbon capture and sequestration (CCS),” he said.

The symposium will look at the status of carbon capture technologies currently being researched and developed in Australia, China and beyond. It will provide insights on flexible operation of power plants with carbon capture, focusing on approaches being used to resolve energy penalty reduction strategies, including the integration with electricity and carbon markets as well as integration with renewable energy.

Dr Abbas says the symposium will also discuss the current drawbacks of carbon capture technology, such as the capital and operational expenditures needed to implement them, coupled with large-scale integration issues. He noted that there are many unanswered questions “particularly around energy penalty imposed by capturing and compressing the CO₂ and the amount of cost reductions these capture plants can bring about through flexible operation”.

International delegates from legislative, industry and research sectors will gather to share their recent work and insights on carbon capture. Guest speakers include delegates from China, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Australia.

For more information and to register, visit http://sydney.edu.au/engineering/chemical/s2c2/.