Procedural justice in carbon capture and storage

This paper examines where and how claims of procedural injustice, or demands for procedural justice, might arise with respect to carbon capture and storage (CCS), taking a broad view of the CCS research, development and deployment process. It considers the principles that might govern such claims and seeks to identify where responsibility might lie for ensuring justice, or addressing contested claims of injustice. It is suggested that claims of procedural injustice arising from CCS are most likely to arise during implementation, from locally affected populations, raising concerns of inadequate information or consultation; but they may also arise from representatives of other indirectly affected groups, such as those affected by upstream impacts of coal mining, or energy market consequences of CCS policy. It is further suggested that claims are most likely to be directed at public authorities in respect of decisions over policy, strategy or authorisations for individual developments, but there are also routes by which claims may be directed at the corporations involved, especially under human rights provisions. The paper suggests a need for careful consideration of both procedural and, by implication, distributive justice matters in the emerging regulatory and support framework for CCS, with a particular imperative for moving public engagement upstream prior to deployment and indeed even to research programmes, to maximise the scope for legitimate influence on future outcomes

A dynamic column breakthrough apparatus for adsorption capacity measurements with quantitative uncertainties

A dynamic column breakthrough (DCB) apparatus was used to study the separation of CH4+N-2 gas mixtures using two zeolites, H+-mordenite and 13X, at temperatures of (229.2 and 301.9) K and pressures to 792.9 kPa. The apparatus is not limited to the study of dilute adsorbates within inert carrier gases because the instrumentation allows the effluent flow rate to be measured accurately: a method for correcting apparent effluent mass flow readings for large changes in effluent composition is described. The mathematical framework used to determine equilibrium adsorption capacities from the dynamic adsorption experiments is presented and includes a method for estimating quantitatively the uncertainties of the measured capacities. Dynamic adsorption experiments were conducted with pure CH4, pure N-2 and equimolar CH4+N-2 mixtures, and the results were compared with similar static adsorption experiments reported in the literature. The 13X zeolite had the greater adsorption capacity for both CH4 and N-2. At 792 kPa the equilibrium capacities of the 13X zeolite increased from 2.13 +/- 0.14 mmol g(-1) for CH4 and 1.36 +/- 0.10 mmol g(-1) for N-2 at 301.9 K to 3.97 +/- 0.19 mmol g(-1) for CH4 and 3.33 +/- 0.12 mmol g(-1) for N-2 at 229.2 K. Both zeolites preferentially adsorbed CH4; however, the mordenite had a greater equilibrium selectivity of 3.5 +/- 0.4 at 301.9 K. Equilibrium selectivities inferred from pure fluid capacities using the Ideal Adsorbed Solution theory were limited by the accuracy of the literature pure fluid Toth models. Equilibrium capacities with quantitative uncertainties derived directly from DCB measurements without reference to a dynamic model should help increase the accuracy of mass transfer parameters extracted by the regression of such models to time dependent data