International visitors attend two scientific conferences
| Date: | Thursday, 19 July 2018 |
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Carbon, core and kangaroos were the order of the day for more than 50 overseas visitors on a Perth field trip last month.
The outing was a highlight of a visit that included a symposium marking a decade of scientific cooperation between the Chinese and Australian Governments, and a Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) conference.
The day-long tour hosted by the Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety (DMIRS), Geoscience Australia and the CSIRO gave the visitors a chance to tour the DMIRS Perth Core Library and the CSIRO’s National Geosequestration Laboratory before heading out to Whiteman Park recreation and conservation reserve in the Swan Valley to get better acquainted with WA’s kangaroos, koalas and wombats.
DMIRS Carbon Storage Coordinator Dominique Van Gent was the department’s host to a large delegation of Chinese Government officials who attended the one-day China Australia Geological Storage of CO2 symposium and visitors from other countries including Japan, Korea, France and Norway who attended the CCUS conference along with the Chinese contingent.
“The two-day conference’s theme was advancing carbon capture and storage through global cooperation and it was gratifying to watch that in action as we discussed a wide range of topics that helped showcase recent research progress in this important scientific field,” Mr Van Gent said.
“Nearly 60 papers were presented and the subjects discussed at the conference were extraordinarily diverse, ranging from pre and post combustion carbon capture, geological storage and CO2 utilisation involving enhanced oil recovery, to geomechanics and negative emissions.”
Mr Van Gent said it was clear to everyone at the conference that CCUS was vitally important to China, and the world.
“China has a large number of small and medium CCUS projects handling up to 400,00 tonnes per annum (TPA) of CO2 and seven major projects under development that will work with more than one million TPA of CO2,” Mr Van Gent said.
“There are 17 large-scale CCS facilities operating around the world and it’s expected that by 2020 there will be 22.
“The conference showed that CCUS remains an essential technology to reduce global emissions and that our major trading partners in China and Japan are increasingly investing in the technology.
“We demonstrated through conference papers and the inspection of the facilities at the core library and the CSIRO that Western Australia has the expertise to play a vital role in CCUS into the future.”
