Leeds (England) - Researchers at the University of Leeds are proposing that CO2 gases be dissolved into water, and then pumped miles beneath the surface of the Earth to be captured permanently in sandstone layers.  The goal is to effectively offset "one of the planet's major contributors to climate change," that of CO2 gases generated by power stations.


The research was based on data collected over a seven-year period from a British Petroleum (BP) oil field in the North Sea.  The report indicated that when oil production began to decline, BP began pumping seawater into the oil reservoir to increase the flow.  As the oil was extracted, some seawater came up with it.  That seawater was then analyzed to determine how easily minerals dissolved in the water.  From this data, they were able to determine that sandstone layers have the ability to dissolve far more liquid must faster than was previously thought.  In fact, within one year, nearly all of the pumped in seawater had been dissolved into the rocks.

According to the research, this kind of permanent storage mechanism would be required if the carbon dioxide dissolved into water was to be removed in a stable way.  Several previous studies have indicated that deep burial within the Earth is a possible solution to address greenhouse gas emissions.  In fact, there is one field operating today at Sleipner, a Norwegian section of the North Sea.  However, until recently the conventional wisdom was that it would take 100s to 1000s of years for the CO2 to be completely dissolved, allowing for the possible future escape.

Armed with this new data, the process will likely be gaining renewed worldwide attention.  In the UK, for example, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has recently announced a large expansion of energy from renewable sources.  He's also launched a competition to build one of the world's first true carbon capture and storage plant.

Stephanie Houston, a PhD student at the University of Leeds, contributed significantly to this endeavor.  Her work was funded as part of an Industrial Case Studentship by the Natural Environment Research Council and BP.  Professor Bruce Yardley, Institute of Geological Sciences, supervised her work.
 
 

Hmm....

Nov 27, 2007 12:28     

...I would take any scientific environmental "study" conducted by Big Oil with a big grain of sea salt.
Joe report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Re: Hmm...

Nov 27, 2007 13:23     

Take every scientific environmental "study" with a grain of salt no matter who the source is.
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Actually...

Nov 27, 2007 13:41     

It's called CO2 sequestering (or something like that). Learned about it in my AP Environmental class. It's a very viable option, IMO. Only problem is, it is quite costly to pump CO2 into the ground... Then again, what are the economic costs if we fail to address global warming???
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Put the carbon back where it came from?

Nov 27, 2007 14:04     

Now that makes sense.
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We already are.

Nov 27, 2007 15:29     

We are putting the CO2 back where it came from by burning fossil fuels. The fossil fuels came from ancient plants that extracted carbon from the atmosphere, we burn the fossil fuels and the carbon is back in the atmosphere.
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Do it cheap and low tech....

Nov 27, 2007 16:22     

Grow trees. Cut the trees down. Bury the trees. Plant more trees on the same land, when they get big enough to the point that they start crowding one another out, cut em down again. Meanwhile you sink a bunch of carbon. Oh wait, if you just didn't recycle paper, you'd accomplish the same thing! After all, most paper comes from forests planted for paper production. Besides, co2 isn't the only culprit or reason for global warming. How about the fact that we just plain generate a LOT more heat that we used to? I wouldn't discredit BP nearly as much as the other oil cos. BP's also been very active in solar power research. I think at least part of their management sees that they need to diversify towards a post oil world. Not that they're saints though.

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global warming is an illusion

Nov 27, 2007 16:41     

Big oil just want to be the ones to put their hand up and say, "look we saved the planet", make a load of money from it at the same time too, and continue to keep selling oil. global warming is an illusion, the world will be over by 2012 anyway. pffft, noobs
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lol

Nov 27, 2007 17:20     

i wonder if they made a mistake if it would end up screwing up the earth even more? and do we know for a face climate change is caused by greenhouse gasses i read something that said about the earth going in cycles of ice ages that has gaps lasting 15-25thousand years or something we are about 18 thousand years into the gap so perhaps we should look at the history of earth before we try and solve a problem that may make it worse lol (sorry for a little off topic aye)

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That's the idea: Put the carbon back where we got i...

Nov 27, 2007 18:18     

That's the idea: Put the carbon back where we got it from. Of course all environmental study is subject to an incredibly formidable list of variables, and the interpretor can shift the results in any way they want. It still takes a lot of energy and resources to actually sink carbon, much harder than it is to get out of the ground at least.
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Rock dissolving water...

Nov 27, 2007 18:53     

Among other things, just got trouble wrapping my head around rock dissollving water, then what happens to the CO2? Just sits in the rock? How much til we hit saturation, and will that be enough? Guess I just need more information... If we could just find a way to breathe CO2, this would all be so much simpler... I mean breathe it in a healthy fashion... We can all ready breathe it. Well, I guess either way that might help the earth. Isn't CO2 good for plants? Maybe we should look into that.

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part Oxygen

Nov 27, 2007 21:12     

I am not much of a chemical scientist but isn't CO2 part oxygen, and if we pump CO2 under the ground, we also pump 2/3rd's of the CO2 gas as oxygen. So we also get rid of the carbon but also some of our air. Smart thinking. I could be wrong here but we breathe part oxygen.
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CO2 H20 = ACID

Nov 27, 2007 21:59     

I'm not sure if anyone out there knows this, but marine biologists tested this idea already, and when they did so (they knew it would turn into carbonic acid) all the marine life around the location where they dumped the CO2 was dead in a radius of about 50 feet. THAT'S HUGE. sure, save the atmosphere, but kill and ocean's while you're at it, no more fish, no more crabs, no more seafood... that sucks, i love seafood.

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Oxygen in CO2

Nov 28, 2007 05:59     

Oxygen in CO2 is already lost. CO2 is a chemical compound with very little potential energy, which means that it won't react with most other chemicals unless the missing energy is added. Separate O2 and carbon have higher potential energy, so you have to spend some energy to dissolve CO2 into O2 and carbon (or some other compound) - this is what plants do with the help of energy from sun (well, they create carbohydrates instead of plain carbon but the idea is roughly the same). It's the same situation as with oxygen in water (H20). If you pump some water underground, it's hardly going to cause oxygen deficit.

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Re: Re: Hmmm....

Nov 28, 2007 07:17     

>>..I would take any scientific environmental "study" conducted by Big Oil with a big grain of sea salt. >> Take every scientific environmental "study" with a grain of salt no matter who the source is. ... choose your grains of sea salt wisely, and don't automatically assume your own grains of salt are better...
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Sun Getting Warmer?

Nov 28, 2007 09:30     

There are thos who say global warming is caused by the sun getting warmer. There are some that say the north pole is melting due to ocean currents and not global warming. They say the south pole is getting bigger (compensating for the north pole melting?). I still think it is a good idea to remove what harm (no matter how little some say it is doing to the enviroment) we are doing to the Earth. Since there is (so far) the only planet like Earth, we should take care of it.

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Re: Oxygen in C02

Nov 28, 2007 09:31     

I have the perfect solution! One danger of sequestering co2 underground is that it might all come up at once, like those lakes with much co2 at the bottom that "turned over" and killed entire villages. So, separate the C from the O2. Breathe the O2. Take the carbon and put it into a stable form that will not re-enter the environment: make diamonds. Lots and lots of diamonds. Give me the first ones and I will give them to my wife. On the other hand, it might take the value out of diamonds when the energy industry is trying to find space for dumps of megatons of the stuff. But seriously: the energy from the fuel comes from combining the carbon with the oxygen (and the hydrogen, too, but no-one objects to the water). Separating it back out is impractical; if we had the energy to do it, we would have left the carbon where it was.

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