The process removes carbon dioxide from gas streams as a liquid that can be readily used for geosequestration or miscible flood-enhanced oil recovery.
After being judged runner-up in the ready-to-market category of the WA Inventor awards last week, Cool Energy received an invitation to showcase the product at the upcoming G'Day USA events in New York, Houston and Los Angeles in January 2008.
Cool Energy managing director Jessie Inman said CryoCell offered lower capital and operating costs than conventional technologies for separating CO2 from natural gas and was therefore a solution to unlock previously unviable gas reserves.
In addition, she said the technology was a superior solution for geosequestration.
"Basically the CryoCell can extract CO2 from natural gas in a liquid form that is immediately ready for reinjection underground at a considerably lower cost than current methods, which is great news for gas companies around the world and even better news for the environment," she said.
"The key advantage is its ability to separate and capture CO2 from the gas in a liquid form so it can be pumped for geosequestration without adding compression, which offers a huge step forward for companies that are currently emitting carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere."
Inman said 2007 had been a milestone year for Cool Energy since completing an extensive program of field trials at Arc Energy's Xyris Gas Field in the Perth Basin near Dongara, paving the way for CryoCell to be commercialised.
"We're now completing a feasibility study to construct a CryoCell gas processing plant in South Australia's Cooper Basin gas fields, in partnership with Great Artesian Oil and Gas and Beach Petroleum," she said.
"The project's objective is to deliver gas by pipelines to Adelaide and Sydney while geosequestering the CO2 removed in the Cooper Basin."
The proposed plant would treat about 20 million standard cubic feet of natural gas a day and convert it to sales gas, LPG and condensate, while the CO2 content was safely captured and returned to underground formations that had held them for millions of years.
"The opportunity for us to reach the world market through the G'Day USA events is incredibly exciting and will go a long way to help us penetrate international markets and potentially change the future of gas processing," she said.
"It will also provide an opportunity for us to talk about Cool Energy's plans to develop other technologies for reducing CO2 emissions."
"We believe this technology could position Australia as a global leader in CO2 solutions by helping gas companies radically reduce the amount of CO2 they emit into the atmosphere," Inman added.
