CO2 Emissions Absorbed By Underground Water
Posted on: Wednesday, 1 April 2009, 14:42 CDT
Researchers said on Wednesday that water deep below ground has safely trapped carbon dioxide for millions of years and may one day help absorb emissions of the greenhouse gas to help slow climate change, Reuters reported.
Chris Ballentine, a researcher at the University of Manchester, who worked on the study, said the finding shows that such carbon capture and storage is possible provided scientists find an area where the geology is suitable.
Therefore, researchers can locate ancient deep water systems miles below the surface to ensure gas doesn't escape back into the atmosphere.
"Clearly we want to bury carbon dioxide in the ground, that is a no-brainer," Ballentine said.
However, he questioned how safe it would be to put carbon dioxide into the ground.
Climate scientists have warned that elevated levels of greenhouse gases emissions like CO2 will lead to higher temperatures, rising seas, drought, and cause floods, heat waves and stronger storms.
Carbon capture and storage could aid governments in the fight against global warming because it captures the emissions from fossil fuel burning power stations and buries them underground.
Experts say the process could keep up to a third of all carbon emissions out of the atmosphere.
But on a commercial scale, the technology is untried and will initially cost over a billion dollars per power plant, creating difficulties for companies to undertake it without support.
China is already opening one coal-fired power plant a week, creating global reserves of coal that could last hundreds of years.
The new report studied how carbon dioxide dissolved into water as well as another technique to see if it reacted with the rocks at nine natural gas fields in North America, China and Europe filled with the greenhouse gas after volcanic eruptions thousands or millions of years ago.
The researchers said water underground was found to be the major carbon sink in these gas fields and had been for millions of years, which could be used to store large amounts of greenhouse gas in the future.
Studies in the past have shown that certain rocks below the surface soak up carbon, but those published in the journal Nature suggested that most rocks do not store the greenhouse gas and the water instead keeps it safe.
Stuart Gilfillan, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh, who worked on the study, said in a statement: "By combining two techniques, we've been able to identify exactly where the carbon dioxide is being stored for the first time."
He believes the new study clearly demonstrates how the carbon dioxide has been stored naturally and safely in underground water in these fields.
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Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
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User Comments (2)
| 2. |
Posted by Matt J. on 04/02/2009, 19:28 I have one question that all these discussions of "carbon capture" ALWAYS leave unanswered. This is really a shame, since it is an important question: has anyone taken into account the cost of transportation of all this captured carbon? That transportation is going to take energy too. Worse yet, in the near future, that energy will almost certainly be supplied by burning fossil-fuels. |
| 1. |
Posted by Lane on 04/02/2009, 10:26 Do people really think that the Earth's climate stays the same? How do our top scientist in the world not realize that global cooling (70s) i mean acid rain (80s) i mean greenhouse gases (90's) wait, wait, global warming (early 00's) oh now its climate change (present day) are nothing more than a farse. Humans can effect their enviroment..we know this...but thinking that the Earth will forever remain the same and that traping a gas that HELPS another organims make oxygen...LOL...laughable... Socailism? Control? brainwashing? call it what you want...i like to call it a way to get rich for poloticians and people who couldn't be real scientist. From all acounts people the % of CO2 in the air....HAS NOT CHANGED. If the oceans rose...this would cause the radius of the earth to rise as well..which means the Earth would actually slow down. (think about an ice skater spinning on ice) Has anyone looked at the south pole? THE ICE IS GROWING THERE!!! And the sattlelite that they were using to measure ice in the north pole was off by hundreds of thousands of square miles!!!*sigh* i want to bash my head in sometimes.... |
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