Abstract
The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry began, in 2002, a seven year project on CO_2 sequestration in coal seams, entitled as "Japan CO_2 Geosequestration in Coal Seams Project (JCOP)". The purpose of this project is to develop a series of processes that can extract the CO_2 discharged from thermal power plants and other large scale emitters, fix it within coal seams in a stable state, and in the process, recover methane as a clean energy source. This paper describes overview of the project and introduces recent CO_2 sequestration test results at the Ishikari coal filed test site. The results indicated the advantage of CO_2 sequestration in coal seams, that is, CO_2 was sequestrated and at the same time, the recovery of coalbed methane was enhanced.
