Last summer (26/06/19) the UK Government announced an award of £4.8 million to Acorn, for its Pale Blue Dot project involving carbon capture and underground storage (CCUS).
The project, which will use the St Fergus gas plant near Peterhead and a number of existing pipelines will bring carbon dioxide as gas from Grangemouth near Edinburgh. The Grangemouth Refinery and Petrochemicals complex has been contracting spasmodically since 2005 and currently unused plant and equipment there can be used to handle carbon dioxide captured at English and Scottish power stations, e.g. Drax.
Carbon dioxide can be transported either as a gas or liquid under pressure but in the quantites likely to be produced it is likely that it would reach Grangemouth by pipeline, rail or sea.
The Pale Blue Dot project was originally funded by the EU and the Scottish government but now the UK contribution will go a long way towards meeting the £11 million cost of the next stage of working the project up to a commericial operation. This will last until early 2021 and Acorn hope to have the project working at planned capacity by 2024.
The carbon dioxide is to be injected into depleted oil fields and into a geological reservoir of saline water deep underground.