Partner Spotlight

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT

Headquartered in Kyoto, Japan, RITE was established by the Government of Japan in July 1990 as a center of excellence to work internationally to restore the natural environment through technological innovation.

RITE's work includes carbon dioxide capture and storage, biorefinery methods, and strategy analysis for the development of a sustainable world economy. Working cooperatively with industry, academia, and government, RITE is implementing a plan focused on two measures:

1)      Development of innovative technologies, and

2)      Expansion of CO₂ sinks.[1]

RITE has been carrying out research and development (R&D) activities through four research groups: 1) systems analysis group, 2) molecular microbiology and biotechnology group, 3) chemical research group, and 4) CO₂ storage research group.[2] Through this latter group, RITE is conducting R&D on the safe, stable, and long-term CO₂ geological storage in deep saline formations and works closely with international organizations, such as the PCOR Partnership, led by the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC).

RITE has been working collaboratively with the EERC and Gevo North Dakota at the Richardton CCS site near Richardton, North Dakota on demonstrating novel monitoring, verification, and accounting (MVA) activities. At this project, optical fibers were installed along the injection well, flowline, and monitoring well and simultaneous measurements are ongoing to demonstrate multi-sensing technology. In addition and to fill the gap between costly seismic surveys, RITE installed  surface orbital vibrators (SOVs) manufactured by Class VI Solutions in California, USA. These SOVs create vibrations by spinning an off-center weight. They are controlled remotely and can be programmed to run on a schedule, so no operator needs to be on site. The vibrations travel into the earth and then back up to the surface and this data is collected by the distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) system and is automatically processed by a computer at the site. The SOVs are placed at four locations at different distances from the injection well. This setup allows operators to track the CO₂ shortly after injection begins, with data collected from the SOV vibrations every few days.[3]

Sources:

[1] www.rite.or.jp/en/about/; [2] www.rite.or.jp/en/research/; [3] www.rite.or.jp/en/results/today/pdf/rt2025_co2storage_e.pdf