A safe, high-capacity method could make carbon sequestration more practical.
One way to combat global climate change is to directly capture carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, as it is being emitted, and store it safely. But methods of carbon dioxide sequestration, notably, pumping the gas into underground geologic structures such as exhausted oil reservoirs, are not practical in many areas, and raise fears that the stored carbon dioxide will escape.
A better way to store carbon dioxide: Pump it into the sea floor in liquid form. There high pressure and cold temperatures make it more dense than water in the surrounding rock, preventing it from rising to the surface. (Source: Daniel Schrag. Artist: Jared T. Williams)
Now researchers at Harvard University and Columbia University have proposed a new method for trapping nearly limitless amounts of carbon dioxide -- a technique they say will be secure, as well as a practical option for areas located far from underground reservoirs.
The researchers, in an article posted online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, propose that carbon dioxide be pumped into the porous sediment a few hundred meters into the sea floor in deep parts of the ocean (greater than 3,000 meters deep), in what one of the researchers, Dan Schrag, professor of geochemistry at Harvard, calls "a fairly simple, permanent solution."
The key was finding a "sweet spot," where the pressure and temperature of the surrounding environment make carbon dioxide more dense than surrounding fluids, thereby trapping it in place. This situation occurs at the bottom of the ocean because of a combination of high pressure and low temperatures -- a fact others have also noted in proposals to store carbon dioxide in deep parts of the ocean.
But such injections would kill ocean life, and, unless sequestered in deep trenches, the carbon dioxide could be carried by currents to shallow areas, where it could reenter the atmosphere.
The researchers' insight was that injections into the sea floor could take advantage of the pressure and temperature of the ocean, while avoiding the negative side effects of earlier proposals. The carbon dioxide, in liquid form, would be brought to the sequestration site by ship or pipeline, and piped into the sea floor with equipment like that used by the oil industry for drilling deep-sea wells. Once beneath the sea floor, the carbon dioxide would interact with the surrounding fluids and produce hydrate ice crystals, which would plug the rock pores, serving as a secondary cap on the carbon dioxide. Over hundreds of years, the carbon dioxide would dissolve in the surrounding water, and then would only have the potential of leaking out by diffusion, a slow process that would take millions of years, the researchers say. Within the next five years they hope to run a large-scale field test of this new approach.
The end of an ambitious carbon-capture project shows that it's hard to economically justify the technology in the absence of a carbon policy.
Despite subsidies and new projects, carbon dioxide sequestration is still a long way off.
A New Jersey plant is planning to put ocean-floor carbon sequestration to the test.
Guest (kitk)
this is really very similar to studies done for disposal of radioactive wastes in deep ocean sediment, which would actually mimic natural geologic traps for elements such as uranium. the advantage is the very long term stability of the host environment, and the sheer capacity--simply, more room than we would ever need. in any case, this would be stopgap, till other energy sources are in place to replace the carbon burners of today. no matter what happens, we WILL have carbon burning for years to come.
Guest (L)
The costs for storing CO2 are not mentioned. The price for fossil KWH if CO2 will be liquified and pumped under oceans? 1 or 2 cents for KWH?
What about changing oceans currents pattern or vulcanic or seismic activity?
A sediments underwater landslide?
What happen if there is a release of some cubic Km near a big coastal city?
BP? Are the same claiming a big bug in their duct just yesterday?
Guest (Bruce)
The oceans are already becoming too acidic from CO2 for many important organisms. Enough of the "trapped" CO2 will likely diffuse into the ocean to make the problem worse.
Guest (Howard)
ISTR there was once a mass extinction event due to CO2 being released from the ocean in the Permian Age. Seems like doing this sort of deal over centuries would be setting the world up for Permian Extinction 2. The Permian event killed 95% of all life on the planet.
Guest (Mike)
If the CO2 is stored under natural pressure in deep sediments of mud, what happens if a quake rocks the area? Do we get a gigantic BURP of gas that wipes out everything in the surrounding area for hunders/thousands of miles?
Guest (Fernando)
Gas from the bottom of the lake
Those researchers need to watch the TV program named "Nova" on PBS, maybe they can remember about what happened with one lake that kill a lot of people due to the release of CO2 from the bottom of that lake.
Guest (kitk)
none of these fears are grounded. the African lake mentioned was shallow, warm, and super-charged with gas--not at all the compressed, cold storage in muds. no, the Permian extinction did not involve CO2. the sort of basin sought for this storage technique would be very little affected by quakes, and the very pressure of the sea would prevent large discharge by means of holding the CO2 liquid and dense. do your math people! we cannot produce enough CO2 to kill the earth! there is not that much fossil fuel around. and come on! planting trees? they do NOT destroy CO2, they only bind it, TEMPORARILY in the cellulose of the wood! it is then released when the plant dies or rots inside. if you want to get rid of CO2, use geology--that is how the earth has always done it.
Guest (Fernando)
First: What about pressure-driven and convective diffusion?
Natural transformations are based mainly on chemical and/or biological processes that may be explained by the geochemical cycles, and some of these processes may be temporary and may need a period of time to transform the CO2, but chemical equilibrium and difussion that is related to mass transfer is always present even in the bottom of the ocean.
Second: Who can assure that this storage will be located in an area that is not affected by quakes?. Geology is a very important tool, but our knowledge about geological processes is still limited.
Third: The CO2 may not be enough to kill the earth, but it could be enought to affect the oceanic food chain, kill some of the aquatic life and probably kill some human beings present in the surrounding area.
Guest (VN)
At 9:30 p.m. on August 12, 1986, a cloudy mixture of carbon dioxide (CO2) and water droplets rose violently from Lake Nyos, Cameroon. As the lethal mist swept down adjacent valleys, it killed over 1700 people, thousands of cattle, and many more birds and animals. Local villagers attributed the catastrophe to the wrath of a spirit woman of local folklore who inhabits the lakes and rivers. Scientists, on the other hand, were initially puzzled by the root cause, and by the abrupt onset, of this mysterious and tragic event.
http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/Nyos.html
Guest (Albert Bezzina)
What would the scientific comunity think if we could engineer primitive photosynthetic organisms which would harvest CO2, trap some of the sunlight reaching the earth,s surface and than concentrate these organisms into a thich sludge? This could potentially be a source for bio-fuels at best or at worst the sludge could be pumped back into depleated oil wells. These sludge wells could turn back to petrolium in several tens of millions of years and give a chance to the next species to evolve into a technological animal to do the same mistakes eons after our own extinction.
Guest (Whuh?)
or we could let the nanites loose.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo
Guest (Albert Bezzina)
Got the massage Whuh. We have unleashed other engeenered photosynthesisers for the noble cause of feeding the world (or part of), we could do the same with enclosed water pans growing and harvesting photosynthetic primitive organisms to reduce CO2 for the whole planet. The chances of man giving up fossel fuels before climate catastrophy is unavoidable is slim.
Guest (kelvin)
has anyone even thought about how much energy it would take to extract and condense the CO2 ? I don't doubt the possibility that this can be done, but if you can visualize the block of dry ice it would create, it would bring a new meaning to nation building. It seems the science forgot about the laws of conservation.
Guest (Fernando)
and I would like to include that their common sense.
Guest (James Williams)
Why can't we sequester CO2 the way nature does - as calcium carbonate. It would be much easier to store a solid.
Guest (kitk)
you are right, carbonates of various forms ARE where most of the atmospheric CO2 goes--not the biosphere. naturally acidic rain decays rocks, and creates carbonates. but, that also means we would have to find massive deposits of minerals easily combined with CO2. this would likely cost more energy than the CO2 burning created! short-to-medium term sequestering through, say, fertilizing plankton might be better. as plankton dies in deep waters it can fall and deposit in muds--where do you think petroleum came from in the first place! but liquid CO2 in muddy basins could also work, and would not produce anything like the African lake scenario (which I well know and understand) as CO2 cannot rise through miles of sea water--it dissolves on the way, and liquid CO2 is denser THAN sea water.
The primary source of calcite, or calcium carbonate, is the secretions of certain sea creatures. We've engineered organisms to help clean up oil spills. Couldn't we engineer an organism to produce calcium carbonate?
Guest (L)
Searching and searching: How much money does cost to liquify and pump CO2?
I was unable to find out the number, someone on this board has this info or link?
Guest (kitk)
the answer is: no one knows. this has not been done on a large scale before. it is done in some plants, but not in long pipelines. much of the physics of liquid CO2 are poorly understood, since almost no one works in it over the ranges of conditions suggested by this proposal. in other words, we find out as we go.
Guest (Fernando)
I agree that mimicry is a good approach to solve the CO2 problem, but what concerns me the most is the trial and error approach.
I agree with kitk that our knowledge about some of the characteristics of CO2 are poorly understood, that's why we need to work with it first, before we try to put the CO2 at the bottom of the ocean.
Remember what happened when one group of researchers injected liquid CO2 in the soil, this experiment created a lot of problems, even when they considered the chemical and biological principles known at that time.
Guest (keith)
in addition the promise of new technologies like carbon nanotubes for molecular filtration might make the sequestration part of the equation less costly
see http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16977&ch=nanotech&sc=&pg=2
Because pressure and cold makes luquid carbon dioxide heaver then water I'm not so worried about some of the concerns expressed so far except, potential acidification of the oceans, and a potential terrorist threat of heating the liquid carbon dioxide with an explosion of sorts.
Personally i wonder if the carbon can be removed from carbon dioxide and used to make plastics or carbon fibers composites or anything else, maybe more carbon nanotubes for other exciting new technologies i.e. space tethers or computing.
Guest (Harold)
Dangerous...I remember a Nova episode that spoke of towns in Africa where all life was wiped out
because a lake in an old volcano
burped it's Co2 while the people
slept. There was footage of dead
people and animals. The children died first because they were closer
to the ground. I was in a factory
fire where a 'Cardox' system was
used instead of water, many people
lost counciousness and had to be
carried out. In Medias Res
Guest (mike)
Would it be neccessary to pump it? How about setting a "factory" site over the sequestration point and extracting the co2 from the atmosphere at that point. Would that create a co2 "hole", would normal atmospheric mixing be enough? The "factory" could be powered by a decommissioned nuclear submarine as one option, hence the "Nuclear Option".
ps: future energy needs can only be met with nuclear energy.
Fusion Reactors still have not been looked at. What happened to the testing for them. Yes I realize the safety issues involved with fusion reactions but the energy produced is much greater then fission. Also Wave Energy is another possible solution.
See, http://www.jamstec.go.jp/jamstec/MTD/Whale/
These are floating stations but I have also read about land based shoreline stations that could be carved into the rock walls as to not destroy the natural shoreline itself.
As for wind power I believe this technology should be left alone except for personal energy consumption. The amount of wind-towers required for mass scale energy production is phenominal. We(mankind) already have cleared too much land for our own use.
Lastly keep the oil companies away from any research. Any. That includes taking and using their money! Absolute power corupts absolutely! So does $$$ Cash!!!
Im only a high school graduate..but..if diamond can be "grown" using a gas torch..using a fosil fuel...then carbon can be turned into diamond using renewable energy....why the heck would u wanna turn carbon into a cold gas and cart it out to sea? too much energy wasted. thats like taking oil out of sand in Canada. (it costs 2 barrels to get 3 if i recal correctly) the way they are planning to store nuclear waste is underground...in rocks that wont be changed for millions of years. if you've already bottled it up at a compressed density....just Fu*!ing store it under ground...carting out to see is only gonna be more difficult, FTW!! cant they just bond it with something that needs a carbon atom? like another carbon atom?
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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Guest (DontDrinkThatKoolAid)
Oh, for God's sake!
Are we really going to go to these lengths to ensure that fossil fuels are in use in perpetuity? You don't HAVE to sequester CO2 from renewable fuels. How about a little of that multi-billion dollar thinking going toward true renewable fuels like large scale non-oilseed biodiesel production or solar-hydrogen. Or is this just a reflection of how much influence the o(i)ligarchy has at Harvard, Columbia and CalTech?
Reply
Guest (Geothermal)
Have you been Sleeping? Yes, Oil gang in control
Of course the oil gangs are in control. There are many other energy resource than oil. If you read the MIT article a couple of days ago about Geothermal, you agree that Geothermal is the way to go. And watch this Geothermal slideshow at http://geothermal.marin.org/GEOpresentation/sld001.htm and you will see how the Oil industry are controlling the world and suppressing alternative energy source.
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Guest (Lance Boling)
Storing Carbon Dioxide
Use alternate fuels and plant trees.
Reply
Guest (Kennedy)
Use rather than store
We should spend a little of the storage research money to identify which plants are most efficient at removing carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, and start growing them now. These could be land or ocean based plants.
At current levels of depletion of rain forest, and increasing production of carbon dioxide, we are burning (literally) the candle at both ends. Storage of CO2 will just defer the problem to future generations, while we continue our greenhouse gas emitting lifestyles!
Reply
Guest (A Scientist)
No
The point is specifically that we are pessimistic and think that it will be hard to get rid of fossil fuels. If you like you could take this as saying that the oil companies are in control and so we must be able to mitigate whatever bad decisions they force on our society.
Reply
Guest (virtualguy92107)
No choice
Unfortunately, we've already delayed long enough that even when we finish converting to sustainable energy we're going to have to take out at least as much CO2 as we've already put in.
Reply
Guest (Helen)
What will happen???
this idea sounded really great, but as i begin to read more and more about it, it seems liek there could be a lot of problems. i'm not up to date with the current technology of finding solutions of removing the CO2 that us humans have created. yes, i believe it is a bit late, we shouldve have made small changes ages ago. now it's kind of like, we have to clean up all the damage and mess we created. it's to typical. we dont do much until it IMPACTS us in a negetive way. all the eco environmentalists have been warning us about global warming, gas emssions for decades NOW. and people continue to ignore it, and continue to drive SUVs and waste energy. so disheartening. But i supoze we can't leave it all to the scientist to figure out a solution. being a citizen its also up to the people to make changes in their lives. Do a little, help a lot. be aware. be conscious and let others know. :-) you are not a useless piece of human being that is taking up the Earth's resources!!!!!!!
Reply
Guest (Helen)
What will happen???
this idea sounded really great, but as i begin to read more and more about it, it seems liek there could be a lot of problems. i'm not up to date with the current technology of finding solutions of removing the CO2 that us humans have created. yes, i believe it is a bit late, we shouldve have made small changes ages ago. now it's kind of like, we have to clean up all the damage and mess we created. it's to typical. we dont do much until it IMPACTS us in a negetive way. all the eco environmentalists have been warning us about global warming, gas emssions for decades NOW. and people continue to ignore it, and continue to drive SUVs and waste energy. so disheartening. But i supoze we can't leave it all to the scientist to figure out a solution. being a citizen its also up to the people to make changes in their lives. Do a little, help a lot. be aware. be conscious and let others know. :-) you are not a useless piece of human being that is taking up the Earth's resources!!!!!!!
Reply
Guest (Helen)
What will happen???
this idea sounded really great, but as i begin to read more and more about it, it seems liek there could be a lot of problems. i'm not up to date with the current technology of finding solutions of removing the CO2 that us humans have created. yes, i believe it is a bit late, we shouldve have made small changes ages ago. now it's kind of like, we have to clean up all the damage and mess we created. it's to typical. we dont do much until it IMPACTS us in a negetive way. all the eco environmentalists have been warning us about global warming, gas emssions for decades NOW. and people continue to ignore it, and continue to drive SUVs and waste energy. so disheartening. But i supoze we can't leave it all to the scientist to figure out a solution. being a citizen its also up to the people to make changes in their lives. Do a little, help a lot. be aware. be conscious and let others know. :-) you are not a useless piece of human being that is taking up the Earth's resources!!!!!!!
Reply