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Weather at the Frozen North
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Last Updated: Aug 07, 2008 03:29 PM
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Monday - December 12, 2005 at 02:18 PM inCO2 Sequestering
There's an article in Wired today about a technology for sequestering carbon dioxide underground. The idea of pumping CO2 underground as a way to reduce greenhouse gasses is not new; people have been talking about it for years.
The disadvantage of pumping CO2 is that the stuff is still a gas (or liquid) under very high pressure deep underground, and there's no guarantee that it won't escape someday. In fact, pockets of CO2 naturally exist in some rock formations, and it does escape from time to time. What's new is the discovery that if you pump the CO2 into a basalt formation, then the CO2 chemically reacts with the rock and forms calcium carbonate (that is, chalk) fairly quickly: within 18 months. Once the chemical reaction happens, the CO2 can't escape, since chalk is solid and chemically stable. This is a permanent disposal method, assuming it works as promised. As it happens, there's lots and lots of basalt in the world. Basalt is the rock which comes out of certain types of volcanoes. It forms much of the ocean floor, the entire Hawaiian islands, and bedrock in many parts of the world. Assuming that this technology works (and it isn't too expensive), there's no reason why power plants in many parts of the world couldn't simply inject their waste gasses right into deep wells located on-site. This could provide the best possible energy solution: a plant which burns coal (the cheapest and most plentiful fuel around), but has zero emissions as everything which would normally go up the smokestack goes into an injection well instead. Posted at 02:18 PM | Permalink | | | |