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Locking CO2 Away For Good
HobbySpacer writes: "The BBC
reports that waste CO2 from methane extraction in the North Sea has been succesfully
pumped back into the pourous sandstone beneath the ocean for the past 6 years without any
signs of leaking.
Carbon sequestration techniques like this are looking increasingly
practical. CO2 is being pumped
back into
depleted oil fields, where it also helps extract remaining oil deposits, and into
coalseams.
The ocean is the biggest natural bank of CO2 but tests of
ocean
sequestration in Hawaii and Norway have been blocked by environmentalists who hate this
kind of quick fix approach to the CO2 problem. But with developing countries like India and China certain to rely on their large coal reserves,
sequestration may be the only realistic approach to reducing their CO2 output.
An
Economist article discusses currently available steam reformation technology that could allow
a coal plant to output power and neatly separated CO2 and hydrogen. The non-polluting hydrogen is
then available for cars with fuel cells while the CO2 is stuffed away."
How long before environmentalists ban carbonated beverages? OMG I am breathing out CO2!! Must... stop... breathing.
What if something weird happens and the CO2 gets released in massive amounts? Like, a bomb, or a sinking ship, or an earthquake? Really though, the Earth's crust isn't a very stable place in its natural state and we don't have the resources and technology to put huge reinforced structures under the ocean to store the CO2 properly.
The ocean floor in particular is a very unstable place. If you look at the pacific, all those tiny little islands were made by volcanos that appeared there all of a sudden, out of the blue, with no early warning. Apparently there are some "hotspots" in the magma layers below our surface, which puncture the Earth's crust forming temporary volcanos, that go extinct as the crust moves tectonically away from the hotspot below it. You never know what might hit an undersea CO2 deposit even if it was a solid, well engineered structure. The crust is very thin there! Cave-ins, earthquakes, volcanic activity in general, you wouldnt want to live at the bottom of the sea.
It sounds like a quick hack that will solve the problem temporarily, but I can just see the CO2 getting released sooner or later.
Cool, maybe in about 2000000 years CO2 will become the next major fuel and everyone will be fighting over land 'rich in ancient CO2 deposits'!
for my beer keg, when the UK is throwing away perfectly good CO2?
Oh yeah, it's the UK, they don't know that CO2 is supposed to be in beer.
Why not plant more trees? Hell, any old plant will do. Not very efficient, but they would certainly make use of the carbon dioxide, and get the right landscaper and s/he'll make it look really nice. Or is this too simple for environmentalists to grasp?
This sig no verb.
Hmm...before coming to a conclusion like that, it might be useful to find out how many studies have been made on what the effect this sequestration might have on the ocean itself. I'm guessing here that it would be pumped directly into the water, right? Otherwise, I don't see how it would be a cost improvement over burying it on land.
We can't know for sure what the biological effect of this would be. That's why "enviro-nuts" are concerned. Most environmentalists that I know really, honestly, genuinely are more concerned about preserving the environment than they are in fund-raising. This is an argument that is consistently railed against environmentalists, and I always think that it's interesting that not much is said about the financial benefits of the polar opposite of the environmentalist: the polluting corporation, who stands to profit *much* more from finding a cheap and easy way to deal with its pollution (or not having to deal with it at all).
Also, notice what the poster said: it's a "quick fix approach." Generally, quick fixes don't bode very well over the long run.
Also, an environmental friend of mind points out that this sequestration is temporary; once the algae that would absorb the CO2 die, they would decompose, releasing *all* of the CO2 they absorbed back into the atmosphere. Ultimately the real solution, he says, is to reduce CO2 emissions period. Unfortunately, it's possible by focusing on sequestration, we might get more indifferent about fossil fuel burning--after all, now we have a "solution" for all that excess CO2.
Ex-President Clinton was on Letterman last night, and he pointed out that if India and China follow our lead of using fossel fuels for energy, that their pollution output will dwarf the US's in the coming years, and we as a nation would suffer the consequences.
It's definitely something to think about. Even nuclear power, as loaded of a topic as it might be, seems a better long-term solution than using fossil fuels for energy.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
Yes, I've noticed how the UK has never quite figured out beer.
</sarcasm>
May we never see th
I wonder why countries like USA worry about CO2 emission and do not sign the related treaty, i.e. Kyoto protocol...
reason defies logic
This approach is useful, but it always leaves the possibility of leaks, and has limited capacity.
The process of mineral carbonation exothermically reacts CO2 with certain silicate minerals (or materials derived from these minerals) to yield carbonates that are stable on a geological time scale. There are more than enough of the desirable silicates (serpentine, olivine) to react with all the CO2 that will ever be produced by fossil fuel combustion.
An interesting article at:
h tm l
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/energy-tech-02o.
Seems like another interesting way to sequester CO2. More ideas, more ways of approaching the problem...especially since peanuts are a pretty good soil-poor crop and have all those other uses.
I mean, you're going to have peanut shells anyways...
--foolish
Injections were simulated at 800 meters, 1500 meters and 3000 meters for 100 hypothetical years near the Bay of Biscay, New York City, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, Tokyo, Jakarta and Bombay.
The models showed that injection at 3000 meters is quite effective at sequestering carbon from the atmosphere for several centuries while injections at shallower depths are less effective. (Not too surprising.) In general, injections into the Pacific Ocean (San Francisco and Tokyo) were more effective than injection at the same depth in the Atlantic Ocean (New York City, Rio de Janeiro and the Bay of Biscay).
The full press release is available here.
Once the algae die? As I recall, algae spreads like wildfire. As some of the plants are dying new ones come into being and start soaking in a whole bunch of CO2.
solution. IF there is a problem to begin with that is. CO2 scares like this are the reason I stopped support environmental groups.
It makes sense that injecting fluid into a faulted area would lead to more frequent earthquakes. However, might this not be a good thing? As long as the relative motion of the crustal plates involved isn't changed, releasing the stress with many small earthquakes might be preferable to fewer, more violent temblors.
Also, while there might be a lot of larger earthquakes in the period shortly after lubricant is injected, this might release the stress that had built up over centuries, allowing the region to enter a lower-stress regime for a long time.
This may turn out to be a valuable tool for the controlled release of seismic energy, that could be used as controlled burns are used to control forest fires.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
The pH of the ocean is moderated by a carbonate/bicarbonate buffer. If you add acid to the ocean (including carbonic acid, H2CO3), some of the carbonate (CO3--) ions soak up hydrogen ions and become bicarbonate (HCO3-) ions. This is okay, but a lot of ocean organisms require carbonate ion to build their skeletons, including corals, molluscs, and a host of smaller things. Cut the fraction of carbonate in the ocean (and add acid, which tends to eat the carbonate they've already laid down) and they have a tough time surviving. The last thing we need at the moment is to put extra pressures on the surviving coral reefs, clam and oyster beds, and everything else out there.
Dumping CO2 where it changs the ocean chemistry may be a bad idea.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
We already make insulation out of used newsprint. If the price of wood goes much higher, it may become economical to make joists and beams out of recycled paper.
Looks to me like a steel building could be recycled fairly easily, and a huge fraction of the earth's crust is aluminum (in the form of aluminum silicates). Then there are the low-tech standbys of adobe and rammed earth. How do you feel about digging up your building materials wherever you happen to be? Regardless of how primitive our methods are now, they won't remain so any more than aluminum remained more precious than gold.Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
It probably would be more efficient to pump H2O with the CO2, then let them trickle down to a depth where the heat provides enough energy for the bacteria to process them.
And as the H2O and CO2 mix is acidic and dissolves some rock...good. That will make larger channels for faster upwelling of all the hydrocarbons...unless calcium deposits where the processing takes place ends up blocking those channels. But the bacterial action is probably eroding the rock in that area anyway.
Well, yes, dihydrogen monoxide vapor does cause well over 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect. But carbon dioxide has a better public relations staff so it gets more publicity.
And the ocean has more than algae. Plankton consists of many creatures, many of which build shells. Carbonate shells. The same stuff as the white cliffs of Dover. That stuff sinks. Some of it also dissolves at a certain depth.
What happens to fish skeletons? And fish waste? Sinks.
F*&king close to water.
In the 1970s dissolved CO2 that was deposited in lake Malawi by volcanic activity was released by a landslide that occurred during a heavy rainstorm. The effect was like shaking up a soda can. A huge amount of CO2 was released, lake levels dropped several *feet* and the released CO2 displaced the O2 around the lake (because it is heavier than O2 and the lake is in a depression). The effect was that hundreds of people who lived around the lake died because of lack of O2.
Got to be aware of the unintended consequences of such actions. If the CO2 gets released it may not have global effect, but it can have an extremely serious local effect.