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Storing Liquid CO2 in the Oceans?
Roland Piquepaille writes "One of the ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to capture carbon dioxide at its source, when it is emitted from power plants for example, and to store it in other places, such as depleted oil and gas reservoirs or even the ocean after liquefaction. But, according to Youxue Zhang, a professor at the University of Michigan, there are pitfalls in this last plan. If the carbon dioxide is not injected deep enough, it can come back to the surface and return to the atmosphere, which is obviously not the desired goal. But, even worse, the liquid-to-gas conversion could happen too suddenly, which could cause a potentially dangerous eruption. So Zhang has developed a model which shows that liquid CO2 would have to be injected to a depth of between 800 and 3,000 meters to keep it from escaping from the ocean."
Recycle, don't trash!
OTOH I failed science.
Wouldn't it be easier, safer, and more intelligent to just protect and encourage coral growth? Coral pretty much does everything we need, if we could just give it an environment to 'do its thing' none of this would be a problem. The entire strategem is rife with deadly pitfalls and screams of huge opportunity to burn energy that produces more CO and CO2. Think about it.
kulakovich
Considering that the vast majority of oxygen production takes place near the surface of the ocean, I would be rather worried about ocean life thriving unexpectedly on what could only be called a fresh breath of CO2.
Or you could just dump some iron into the ocean to supercharge plankton growth. Probably cheaper, easier and a tad more of a natural way to do it.
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didnt anyone tell him that carbon dioxide can dissolve in water to make carbonic acid?
does he honestly think that acidic seas would be better for the environment?
I love this kind of thinking. It's just like burying our nuclear waste and unused chemical weapons. Gee, nothing bad could EVER come of that.
Maybe... eventually... people like this will come to the realization that you can't hide everything when you only have a limited amount of space. This is just another example of short-sighted solutions that lead to future generations problems. Sweeping everything under the rug doesn't solve a damn thing except letting corporations get away with being more environmentally unsound because they can claim, "Hey, it's no problem. We took all of our waste products and stuck 'em in the ocean!"
I remember reading an article a few months ago about large amounts of CO2 being trapped under lakes and being released all at once due to being disturbed by an earthquake or some such. Anyways, all of this CO2 came forth and being such a heavy gas, it lingered in the populated area and sufficated whole villages/towns.
If we just bury / submerge the CO2, this could happen all over again. Thus wiping out any life in the area it occurs.
As a side note, if someone out there could find the article I'm referencing and post it, it would be appreciated.
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
Here's some BBC coverage of one of these lakes in Cameroon. Terrifying.
What????? People drink frothy carbonated water all the time and they don't drop dead. It's slightly acidic if anything. It's not this uber chemical of doom.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
The resulting biomass could even be feed back into the energy cycle.
By the way, it was John Wyndham who first popularised this concept.
Roland must be paying /. even more now, since not only their posting his shit like crazy, but they let it stand as top news item for a long while.
Subscribers must be pissed...
Myself, I can only join the rest of the Roland Piquepaille Watch squad in a unison Nelson-like laugh: "HA-ha!"
And no, mods, this ain't offtopic. Look at the submitter and his submissions history to see what I mean.
The idea of dissolving CO2 in oceans is incredibly reckless. Look at the consequences of degassing of a small lake and you can dismiss this silliness out of hand. The earth's natural mechanism for CO2 removal is limestone formation. Perhaps would be wiser to imitate that.
an ill wind that blows no good
There is an extremely good reason why this happens. There is a significant delay in implementing a workable solution due to the anti-nuclear crowd and politics.
The anti-nuclear crowd doesn't want a solution to be choosen, since the lack of an implemented solution is a valid complaint against nuclear power. In addition, by imposing unreasonable standards on the handling of nuclear waste, the anti-nuclear crowd wishes to increase the operating costs of nuclear reactors.
There is also political jockying on the state of Nevada's part. By objecting, not only do they please their anti-nuclear crowd, but they also increase the possibility that the federal government will throw more money at the state of Nevada to appease them.
A nuclear power plant has the disadvantage of being a target of fear. I'm not going to lie and say that nuclear power is utterly safe: No dependable, competitive power source that we have at this time is. But nuclear power is proven technology that kills less people per year than the alternatives we have.
Nuclear power also has the advantage of not contributing CO2 to the atmosphere. If the US switched all of its power plants over to nuclear, it would drasticly reduce the amount of CO2 emitted each year.
But hey, lets spend the next 10 years researching solar power some more. Perhaps the Solar Tower in NSW will be a workable design that can dependably deliver electricity at a competitive price. Perhaps we'll develop a cheap black box that can store massive amounts of electricity so that can create consistant electrical output from wind turbines. Perhaps flying fusion-powered pigs will land on powerlines and contribute electricity directly to the grid.