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Scientists In Iceland Turn CO2 Into Stone (theguardian.com)
New submitter Zmobie quotes a report from The Guardian: [Carbon dioxide has been pumped underground and turned rapidly into stone, demonstrating a radical new way to tackle climate change.] The unique project promises a cheaper and more secure way of burying CO2 from fossil fuel burning underground, where it cannot warm the planet. Such carbon capture and storage (CCS) is thought to be essential to halting global warming, but existing projects store the CO2 as a gas and concerns about costs and potential leakage have halted some plans. The new research pumped CO2 into the volcanic rock under Iceland and sped up a natural process where the basalts react with the gas to form carbonate minerals, which make up limestone. The researchers were amazed by how fast all the gas turned into a solid -- just two years, compared to the hundreds or thousands of years that had been predicted. One of the downsides for the project is that it requires 25 tons of water for each ton of CO2 buried. However, seawater can be used. The Iceland Project (also referred to as the CarbFix Project) is already being upscaled to bury 10,000 tons of CO2 each year, in addition to the hydrogen sulphide which also turns into minerals.
Wow. They did it just yesterday too.
Trying to thwart the next Ice Age!
No, wait, I think I got that backwards! They are trying to prevent becoming Texas!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
News at 9! 10! 11! 12!
The summary says "One of the downsides for the project is that it requires 25 tons of water for each ton of CO2 buried. However, seawater can be used." Can any old seawater be used? Would you be able to use the water that gets pumped to the surface with crude oil work? It would be helpful if you could put that back into the ground along with the CO2.
Slashdot your i and slashcross your t.
Dupe?.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
when the earth's heat flow is less, and there is less out-gassing of CO2 due to volcanism, CO2 will gradually be incorporated in carbonate rocks forever, until atmospheric CO2 concentrations become so low that photosynthesis shuts down, ending life on earth. The timescale is about 1.1Gyr. CO2 is life giving gas. Talk about sequestering it is moronic.
an ill wind that blows no good
I didn't think it was quite that cold up there.
Humans aren't causing global warming. That's a fact, just like that Slashdot editors love dupes.
So, you dig up Carbon (coal) you burn it with Oxygen from the air, and the you bury the Carbon Dioxide back in the ground. Net result - the air loses Oxygen. Now it's a small amount. There is far more Oxygen in the air than all the CO2 mankind has ever produced. But the broken cycle worries me. If we commit to Carbon Sequestration in the long term (thousands of years) we would we would eventually screw up the air more by depleting it of Oxygen than we currently are by emitting CO2.
captcha: "oblivion". Kinda appropriate.
Ever since our newest Slashdot Overlords (Whipslash et al.) took over, things have been improving. With today's dupe, however, this is the day it really, really feels like home.
On topic: This is a story I'm OK with reading twice, because even though it's in the early stages, it shows promise for our ability to use science and technology to overcome the damage our tech-fueled overconsumption has caused during the past two centuries. (And I'm using "tech" here in a broad sense of the term to cover many technologies, from the Industrial Revolution onward.) I'd like to see more investment in this to see if it's really viable at scale.
Classic PR greenwash. No mention of how much energy costs from fossil fuels would rise if this method were implemented at scale or if any energy companies are willing to implement it at scale. Renewables are already at parity with with fossil fuels and in some cases cheaper. Why would investors want to pour good money after bad?
"The researchers were amazed by how fast all the gas turned into a solid -- just two years, compared to the hundreds or thousands of years that had been predicted." ..
What other miscalculations have scientist made in planet aging etc., or any other 'ageing'? That is a pretty big difference in predictions.
This process is not completely new. A process related (or actually this one) was used by the ancient romans to produce a type of concrete that severely outlasts current commercially available concrete. That recipe was thought lost, but recently someone managed to replicate it. It used see water, high quantities of carbon and volcanic rock/ash. It is good that new uses have been found for the process or to similar processes.
Onda Technology Institute
I've read a greek myth about origins of this technology.. It was all about the bad breath of Medusa...
Another opportunity to quell your conscience with blind faith in anti-science dogma that you can spew in a pathetic attempt to justify pathological greed and violence on a global one-time-only scale.
Jesus will save the worthy! The apocalypse is coming soon, so future generations of humanity are irrelevant. You can pry my Sunoco stock and my bible from my charred dead hands,
God Fucking Bless America! Jesus fuck!
You must not know what a stone is.
They are planning to bury 10,000 tons of CO2 in a year, but a single US citizen pollutes an average of 16,500 tons of CO2. A proof of concept is great, but can this technology be scaled up to a point where it will have a noticeable impact.?
You seem to assume (s)he is a citizen of the USA. woi, oh woi?
16500 tons of CO2 per year per person ? Cite? I'm guessing you fucked up by a factor of 1000, which means you are a politician not a techie. So go away and boil your head.
Sending it all to China. Give them a penny per kilo-ton. Problem solveded.
From a population of 400,000 people, what they did is a notable achievement.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
for fat americans to carry on their rabid consumption orgy without any regards for consequence.
"The researchers were amazed by how fast all the gas turned into a solid -- just two years, compared to the hundreds or thousands of years that had been predicted."
"One of the downsides for the project is that it requires 25 tons of water for each ton of CO2 buried."
Young earth creationists often talk about rock layers being formed quickly in Noah's flood. This seems to be at least partially supported by both statements above.
I never understand why young earth creationists feel the need to [mis]use science to justify things like the flood. They believe in an omnipotent god that created the world before he created the sun and stars - a god that is clearly capable of ignoring physics.
Just because humans are incapable of operating outside of physics does not mean God is incapable of it.
The CO2 levels on the earth just 100,000 years ago are 3 times what they are now... And there was no global warming.... Matter of fact, there was an ICE AGE going on at the time.
Every.Single.Day.
It must be true! The media keeps bleating on about it every single day, catastrophic man-made global warming!
www.wattsupwiththat.com
www.climatedepot.com
There is no such thing as catastrophic man-made global warming, and carbon dioxide is incapable of changing 'global temperatures'.
So why do the creationists act as if he is?
For that matter, why make a flood in the first place? If God is above physics, he can just snap his metaphorical fingers and make all he want to disappear, disappear. Or reload an earlier snapshot or whatever.
25 tons of seawater is about 25 cubic meters....
This process, done on a grand scale, might reduce sea level
It is not our fault you flunked chemistry and physics, nor is it our obligation to educate the hopelessly stupid such as yourself.
Your blind faith in capitalism will kill us all. Actually it already has.
It is too late now anyway, water in the atmosphere is the primary problem now. The water that sustained us will now kill us.
So, knowing that it works so well, when the plans for terraforming Venus start?
Won't someone please think of the green plants?!
Physics as we understand is little more than our explanation of our observations. These explanations tend to be consistent across materials and such but by no means do they deny or prevent any other explanation from being true also - even if little evidence is present. This is obvious when you look at the progression of metallurgy and materials like steel became available from the same raw materials as iron.
Now you ask why did something happen or why does the claim happen. Well, first - if you were teaching a lesson to someone, would they learn that lesson if you did nothing in their presence? Of course not. I cannot teach you programming if all i do is give you a compiled program to run.
Next, why do they need to point out an omnipotent being made something look a certain way. Well it is as simple as that way being used to explain the impossibility of the omnipotent being. You cannot really expect to tell someone they are wrong because of X and expect them to stay silent when you refuse to consider Y-1=X as well as Y*Z=X. So when you say X means something and there are more than one ways to find X, you have to also allow the other ways.
And that is even without getting into whether a flood or God is true.
If I were to guess at a reason for a flood like that, probably to make a point.
This kind of chemically reactive rock is necessary to capture CO2. The Iceland proejct used basalt which is mainly just available in Hawaii and southernmost California. Other fresh volcanic rock available in the Cascades and western US may wotk too. But most power plants are not currently colocated there. This would be an issue in Cina and India, the other two largest CO2 producers.
Like I said when this was posted previously this week...
This is the wrong thing to be investing in. All this carbon sequestration technology is pretty much pointless unless you can make it cost neutral on an industrial scale. It this processes costs money, even a little, the production of CO2 will NOT abate world wide. The likes of China, Russia and the Third World will simply choose the cheapest form of energy production and laugh at the western world for unilaterally deciding to only use more expensive energy and putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage. And believe me, it's quite a disadvantage.
What we should be doing is investing in cleaner and cheaper forms of energy technology. Yes, Solar and Wind, but MORE than just that. We need to have a viable Fusion process, push Fission development and use. Invest in energy technology development in areas where there are both the possibility for zero emissions and economic viability and all this carbon sequestration stuff is clearly neither. Sequestration ALWAYS takes more energy and always makes the energy we get cost more because of that. We need to stop investing in loosing propositions and go for the *REAL* solutions.
To put it another way... Would you put your investment money in a business that is loosing money and has no prospects for changing that except perhaps being able to loose less money next quarter by cutting their size and selling less (yet loosing MORE per unit sold doing so)? Of course not, that would be stupid. You want to invest in a company who has a plan that develop a new way of supplying their customer's needs that might someday turn a profit and give you a return... I'm saying invest in things that have a chance to give us a return, not stuff that never will..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If the "upscaled" project sequesters 10,000 tons of CO2 every 2 years, that offsets the emissions of about 300 Americans. But there are lots more of us, and we're not even the biggest polluters. This will only start making a noticeable difference if it could be scaled up further, by a factor of one million.
If it only took 2 years to turn into stone, then maybe the Earth really IS only 6000 years old!
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
How much energy is needed?
Can you give an example where creationists act as if God is bound by physics?
As for you second question "why make a flood in the first place?" Why did you have Froot Loops for breakfast instead of Cheerios?
Holy crap, please stop.
We all want global warming, it's way too cold on this here planet.
Water is good, we need it to live.
Especially the fresh water locked in the glaciers.
Just because some elites view things as bad, we shouldn't all.
For example, this horrific process drains precious sea water, what about the fishes?
EVERYTHING freezes up there. Where's the news?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Try again. CO2 levels 100k years ago were about 225ppm. The local peak was around 130kya, at around 280ppm.
Maybe, but I can barely make out what you're saying because your horse is too high.
AP, Earth. It has been discovered that plants take in CO2 and create O2 as a waste product.
You know wouldn't it be so much more efficient if we just planted trees?
They breathe in this co2 stuff and put out air, as well as lower the temperature wherever they are.
Then the govt can buy the carbon credits from people that have more than 5 trees on their property, so much $$ per tree.
Tell me, where do you go to buy carbon credits? Who generates those now?
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Plant more TREES
Casteism
Having swum in warm-water springs in Britain with the snow settling in my hair, I look forward to visiting the Blue Lagoon one winter.
What's an Icelandic Slashdottir's favourite song? "Thorn in my side?"
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"