January 13, 2010 (Energy Efficiency News) French oil company ‘Total’ yesterday inaugurated an end-to-end carbon capture, transportation and storage demonstration project in southwestern France. The €60 million Lacq facility uses Air Liquide’s oxycombustion carbon capture technology, which substitutes pure oxygen for air in an industrial boiler to produce less flue gas that is 90% CO2. The carbon is then piped from the Lacq site to the Rousse geological storage site 27 km away, where it is injected into a depleted natural gas reservoir 4.5 km underground. Total expects the process will capture 120,000 metric tons of CO2 over the next two years – equivalent to that emitted by 40,000 cars – and will monitor the storage site for a further three years.

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