Richland Community College
IN-2: Innovation 2

Illinois Carbon Capture and Storage Community Outreach
Richland Community College is engaged in an innovative global educational outreach activity, which comes from an exciting partnership with Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) and the U.S. Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). Richland is one of four partners in the awarded U.S. Department of Energy 2010 project: “CO2 Capture from Biofuels Production and Sequestration into the Mt. Simon Sandstone.” The other partners are Schlumberger Carbon Services (SCS) and Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS).
This U.S. Department of Energy project activity sponsored by the National Energy Technology Laboratory puts Richland, as a community college, in a unique, leading edge position to provide academic, development, training, and readiness services to prepare the local, regional, national, and international workforce to enter “sequestration” careers within emerging CO2 capture, sequestration, storage, and enhanced oil recovery industries. The Richland solution will train the workforce for these industries by addressing the existing workforce, dislocated workers, and the future workforce in elementary, secondary and higher education. In 2012, Richland will provide the world’s only higher education sequestration technology Associate of Applied Science degree, certificates, and high school dual credit.
Specific community carbon capture and storage educational outreach activities planned for year one include: a) routine Richland noncredit community education classes (Summer and Fall 2011), b) presentations at the Illinois State Fair (August 2011), c) presentations at the International Farm Progress Show (August-September 2011), d) presentations at the Small Farm Food and Energy Expo (September 2011), e) presentations at the Sustainability Safari (Summer 2011), f) presentations at the Richland Discover Summer Excursion (Summer 2011), g) 7 segments on the WAND television show “Richland Ag Today” (May-December 2011), h) 2 segments on WSOY radio show (June-September), and miscellaneous public outreach public information sessions hosted by the Richland Shilling Community Education Center (such as that held in February 16, 2011).
Richland will be the local, regional, national (and international) focal point for carbon capture and storage community outreach and academic programming by providing an innovative experiential learning and knowledge transfer environment. The academic spaces associated with this project will feature “smart” classrooms and laboratories interconnected to provide a state-of-the-art learning environment with “real time” sequestration data acquisition, monitoring, and analysis regarding injection and geological system performance demonstrated on the Richland campus. The CO2 injection and monitoring wells instrumentation will be used as educational resources for real-time assessment and evaluation of injection and geological system performance. As a technology knowledge transfer platform, this provides a real-time educational value to visitors from around the world.
Educational programming will take place at the Richland main campus, which is adjacent to the project’s CO2 injection and monitoring wells. With this, Richland will be the Central Illinois regional focal point for all carbon capture and storage community outreach and academic programming.