Carbon Sequestration: Speed Bump or Wall?
by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 07. 5.06
No, that's not the head of a fly. It's a carbon dioxide (CO2) molecule. Looks harmless, but now it's causing some headaches among the scientists who are developing carbon sequestration methods (basically, capturing CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels and burying it under ground to keep it from contributing to global warming). Richard A. Kerr writes in Science: "Scientists testing the deep geologic disposal of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide are finding that it's staying where they put it, but it's chewing up minerals. The reactions have produced a nasty mix of metals and organic substances in a layer of sandstone 1550 meters down, researchers report this week in Geology. At the same time, the CO2 is dissolving a surprising amount of the mineral that helps keep the gas where it's put." It's not leaking so far, but it will require a second look before carbon sequestration can be used on a large scale.
A pilot experiment in Houston, Texas, found that:
the CO2 dropped the pH of the formation's brine from a near-neutral 6.5 to 3.0, about as acid as vinegar. That change in turn dissolved "many, many minerals," says Kharaka, releasing metals such as iron and manganese. Organic matter entered solution as well, and relatively large amounts of carbonate minerals dissolved.The loss of carbonates worries Kharaka particularly. These naturally occurring chemicals seal pores and fractures in the rock that, if opened, could release CO2 as well as fouled brine into overlying aquifers that supply drinking and irrigation water. Perhaps more troubling, says Kharaka, is that the acid mix could attack carbonate in the cement seals plugging abandoned oil or gas wells, 2.5 million of which pepper the United States. The lesson is that "whatever we do [with CO2], there are environmental implications that we have to deal with," he says.
Geologist Julio Friedmann of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory says that "The crust of Earth is well configured to contain CO2," and that there has been no catastrophic failure at the 80 US oil wells that have been injected with CO2 (to help get the oil out) for 30 years, but one can wonder if such a failure might have gone unnoticed since scientists have just learned about the problem.
Carbon sequestration doesn't look quite as good if it causes a toxic mix of metals and organic substances to leak into shallow aquifers. We'll keep an eye open for more developments about this story. ::A Possible Snag in Burying CO2, via ::Carbon Sequestration: An Idea Whose Time Has Gone?. See also: ::Congress May Insure Against Coal-Induced Flatulence
Carbon sequestration is an idiotic idea IMHO. You know what the biggest bodies of sequestered carbon are? Coal mines. All you have to do is to NOT BURN IT, and all those millions of tons of carbon will stay out of the air.
By sequestering CO2, what they're actually doing is sequestering oxygen; there are two oxygen atoms for every carbon atom in CO2, so if you burn a million moles of coal and sequester the vapors, you've effectively taken two million moles of oxygen out of the atmosphere. I think this is a seriously bad idea in the long run.
Carbon sequestration seems to be an attempt to cheat the engergy out of carbon without getting any polution. Unfortunately, you can't cheat nature too long before things fall apart.
http://uaelp.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=ARTCL&ARTICLE_ID=2\
25012&VERSION_NUM=3&p=34
Independent testing firm CK Environmental, Inc. conducted a week-long evaluation of the GreenFuel beta system emission reduction performance. CK Environmental's test report certifies that over the seven-day test period, the GreenFuel beta system simultaneously removed 85.9 percent NOx (2.1 percent, regardless of weather or light conditions), and 82.3 percent CO2 (12.5 percent) on sunny days, or 50.1 percent CO2 (6.5 percent) on cloudy or rainy days. The testing methods conformed to EPA standards for measuring NOx and CO2 emissions. CK Environmental vice president Mike Cahill oversaw the project.
"This is one of the most promising and unique technologies to reach this stage of field demonstration in a very long time," he said. "I have never seen anything like it in my career so far."
http://www.greenfuelonline.com/index.htm
http://www.irccm.de/greenhouse/project.html
Apart from using the biomass produced by the microalgae for traditional uses, such as fuel in bioreactors and in agriculture, the aim of this project is to find a means to turn the biomass into building material so that it can be incorporated in buildings. This would effectively and almost permanently remove CO2, analogous to how carbon is buried on the ocean floor by the operation of biological pump.
I believe that you can categorize carbon sequestration as a fix to a problem. And the nature of fixes is that the fix becomes the next problem. Then we go looking for how to "fix" that problem, and that fix becomes the next problem. And so on.
Fixes just don't get the job done. They are illusions that have us think that we are making a difference when in reality we aren't really or we are pushing off the problem, or in the worst case, we are creating a much bigger one.
In Australia, they are dealing with cane toads. The toads were introduced to Australia to deal with the original problem, which was cane beatles. Well, the toads couldn't hop high enough to reach the cane beatles, but the local finches, snakes and other toads were tasty. Also, the toad secrets a toxin when under duress that kills potential predators because they didn't co-evolve. The cane toad continues to feast on Australia.
So the fix to the cane beatle problem has become the next problem. The Australian government is now looking at how to fix the problem of cane toads by introducing a virus. Do you care to speculate on how that will turn out?
Carbon sequestration, in my view, is a fix and doesn't address the root cause. As a fix it likely has some unintended consequences that we may not know about and may not discover for many decades.
Let's instead continue to push for as clean energy as we can get right now while also conserving.
-Andre'
http://www.nyos.lv/?l=2&m=1&c=8&p=1
Example leakage CO2.
“… , trigger mechanism of the limnological catastrophes, who be happened in CAMEROON on lake "MONOUN" in 1984 and on lake "NYOS" in 1986 , was switched on by influence of the atmospheric precipitations in 1983.
Limnological catastrophes on lake "MONOUN" in 1984 and on lake "NYOS" in 1986, were caused by the instantaneous ejections of the gaseous carbon dioxide from the sediment stratums under the lake’s bottom.
The Degassing the waters of the lakes "NYOS" and "MONOUN" can not prevent from the repetition in lakes "NYOS" and "MONOUN" of the limnological catastrophes, similar to the catastrophes of 1984 and of 1986 , in which the trigger mechanism was switched on by the influence of the atmospheric precipitations.
Under influence of the atmospheric precipitation the trigger mechanism of the the limnological catastrophes in the lake "Nyos" and the "Monoun" , in any time may to be switched on and in a certain time hereon will happen of the limnological catastrophes.”
Obviously not burning coal in the first place is a great solution. The conservation community tried to stop new coal plants and the powers in Wisconsin didn't listen, so they are building 1800MW of pulverized coal and proposing more. At Oak Creek, WI, IGCC was on option on the table, and would have been much better for the health of the residents and because it could provide the opportunity for sequestration. But, even if it is not sequestered, it is more efficient and lives that will be lost to pulverized coal soot would have been saved. IGCC is not just coal, either. At the NUON plant (Buggenum Netherlands) they burn 30% biomass in an IGCC plant.
Finally, the carbon sequestration proposed for the U.S. is not to supersaturate water at the bottom of deep thermally-stratified lakes. It is to pump liquid or supercritical CO2 into geological reservoirs covered with caprock. The worst case scenario is leakage through a bad well, which happened at Geyser Lake, Utah when a well was drilled into a naturally CO2 rich aquifer in 1940. http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~glennon/crystalgeyser/ Note the pictures and the PEOPLE next to the geysers. The amount of CO2 released doesn't overwhelm people because it dilutes too fast. As an analogy, the threat from lake eruptions (Monoun) is like the threat from drowning when a dam breaks, while the threat from carbon sequestration reservoirs is like the threat of drowning when a drill hits an artesian aquifer.
cool