Converting CO2 and Heavy Metals recovered from Oil and Gas Wastewater into Carbonates

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Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are a huge environmental problem especially from oil recovery operations. For the Alberta oil and gas industry, CO2 emissions associated with oil extraction, processing, upgrading, and refining has been a major challenge that has and will limit investment and social acceptance of Alberta crude oil. The new research collaboration proposed here has the potential to lower the CO2 emissions of oil sands bitumen extraction and upgrading to a level below that of conventional oil production. Easwara and Dr. Gates will unite their unique skillsets in a new collaborative research project to extend Easwara's technology to include CO2 fixation. The proposed research will use the carbonating wastes from Easwara's electrocoagulation process together with silicate precipitation to form carbonates from captured CO2 or flue gas, for example from an upgrader or SAGD plant (from the steam generator). Both the produced water and CO2 are co-located so this process fits ideally to convert two waste streams to a useful and valuable product.