The Lloyd's Register Educational Trust (LRET) Collegium 2011 
COFS researchers contribute to international carbon initiative
Two COFS students are among 19 researchers from around the world who were invited to England to take part in a unique venture aimed at solving the global challenges of carbon capture and storage (CCS).
Steven Cheng and Xiaojun Li, of the Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems, took part in a collegium organised by The Lloyd's Register Educational Trust at the University of Southampton in July.
Working in teams, the researchers produced four technical reports looking at ways to overcome carbon capture and storage challenges utilising the world’s oceans.
“My group focused on a concept design to store CO2 in depleted oil /gas reservoirs located in the UK sector of the southern North Sea,” said Xiaojun. “It supplies an entire solution for CO2 sequestration with seamless transition from capture and transportation to storage. The solution includes the unique feature of using nearby offshore wind farms to power the storage process.”
Steven says his group looked at a ‘Green Town’ concept, and finding ways of engaging entire communities in the process of carbon capture and storage. “The ‘Green Town’ concept aims to make all the CO2 emitted by its population available for storage,” he said. “Transportation of the captured CO2 would be by ship or pipeline and sequestration would be in offshore geological formations.”
According to Michael Franklin, the Director of The Lloyd's Register Educational Trust the aim of the collegium was to bring young researchers together to focus on a topic of global importance. “By facilitating international collaboration amongst the engineers of the future, The LRET is encouraging closer cooperation between centres of research excellence worldwide in tackling engineering challenges which affect us all,” he said.
The young researchers say the opportunity to work with ocean and offshore engineering researchers from around the world was an invaluable experience.
“Steven and Xiaojun’s involvement at the collegium forms part of The Lloyd’s Register Educational Trust’s $2.1 million sponsorship of a Centre of Excellence on Offshore Foundations here at UWA,” said Winthrop Professor Mark Cassidy, the Director of COFS. “For them to work on novel ocean solutions is timely, considering that the world’s largest carbon capture and storage projects is currently under construction as part of the Western Australian Gorgon development”
The four reports produced by the researchers are available at www.lr.org/about_us/lret/collegiumbooks2011.aspx
