Natural gas, coupled with carbon capture and storage (CCS), could be a cheap and reliable low-carbon energy source in the long term and a critical technology for climate change mitigation while delivering sustainable power. Gas-to-wire (GTW) is the process of generating electricity from natural gas at or near the field, different from producing electricity at a centralized power plant. This paper presents the results of a prefeasibility study of applying an integrated GTW/CCS scheme to a gas-production field.
GTW
In the GTW process, a gas turbine is placed close to the field and all or part of the field production is directly converted into electricity for use onsite or for sale to the local market. This production scheme is completely different from the traditional one because the natural-gas turbine is close to the fossil-fuel fields, regardless of whether they are far from or right next to the consumer market.
For a low-emissions process, the carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by the power plant can be captured, injected, and stored underground.
The GTW scheme can be particularly useful for marginal fields and associated natural gas development when volumes available are too small (between 10 Bcf and 1 Tcf) to be exploited by use of traditional transport technologies.
