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In November, the Paris Climate Agreement goes into effect to reduce global carbon emissions. To achieve the set targets, experts say capturing and storing carbon must be part of the solution. Several projects throughout the world are trying to make that happen. Now, a study on one of those endeavors, reported in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, has found that within two years, carbon dioxide (CO2) injected into basalt transformed into solid rock.
Lab studies on basalt have shown that the rock, which formed from lava millions of years ago and is found throughout the world, can rapidly convert CO2 into stable carbonate minerals. This evidence suggests that if CO2 could be locked into this solid form, it would be stowed away for good, unable to escape into the atmosphere. But what happens in the lab doesn't always reflect what happens in the field. One field project in Iceland injected CO2 pre-dissolved in water into a basalt formation, where it was successfully stored. And starting in 2009, researchers with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Montana-based Big Sky Carbon Sequestration Partnership undertook a pilot project in eastern Washington to inject 1,000 tons of pressurized liquid CO2 into a basalt formation.
After drilling a well in the Columbia River Basalt formation and testing its properties, the team injected CO2 into it in 2013. Core samples were extracted from the well two years later, and Pete McGrail and colleagues confirmed that the CO2 had indeed converted into the carbonate mineral ankerite, as the lab experiments had predicted. And because basalts are widely found in North America and throughout the world, the researchers suggest that the formations could help permanently sequester carbon on a large scale.
Similar results were found in Iceland.
Does injecting CO2 into rock really make more sense than not putting it into the atmosphere in the first place?
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday November 20 2016, @12:01PM
When I was a kid, I was taught in school that storing chemicals in the Earth mucked with nature and was called "pollution." And that pollution was bad.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by choose another one on Sunday November 20 2016, @12:40PM
Yeah, so we put them in the sky instead. Worked out really well that did.
When I was a kid the solution to industrial smog was to build taller chimneys, and in fact it worked. It caused acid rain thousands of miles away in another country, but hey can't have everything, and anyway that wasn't our problem...
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 20 2016, @12:59PM
Carbon dioxide is unlike the usual pollution. It is a gas that naturally is in the atmosphere (you yourself are adding some with every breath). The problem is not that it is released at all (indeed, without any CO2 our planet would be doomed), but that we are adding more of it than is removed by natural processes (note that one of those natural processes is the formation of carbon minerals).
So you would have to argue that the increased formation of carbon minerals is a problem. However I have a hard time to imagine how that would be the case.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday November 20 2016, @01:12PM
Fair enough...
Are we planning to add more CO2 to the ground in the form of carbon minerals, than is removed by natural processes? :)
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday November 21 2016, @03:06AM
The natural process is for carbon to be sequestered as minerals. It rains, the water weathers silicates and you end up with carbon containing minerals.
Note that as the CO2 content of the atmosphere goes up, you get more rain which reduces the CO2 content, though it takes at least a 1000 years. This is just speeding up a natural process.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday November 20 2016, @05:32PM
When I was a kid, I was taught in school that storing chemicals in the Earth mucked with nature and was called "pollution."
Not every chemical is a pollutant. The chemical H2o, for example. Carbonates are not pollution.
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(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday November 20 2016, @06:51PM
No, H2O isn't a pollutant. But it does enjoy the position of being the most abundant greenhouse gas [nasa.gov] by a wide margin...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2016, @08:56PM
So are you proposing we should try to reduce H2O evaporation rates instead?
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday November 21 2016, @03:09AM
It is also the greenhouse gas that self regulates the most, leaving us at a comfortable temp rather then the -30 that it would be without the H20 and other greenhouse gases.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2016, @08:38PM
Your honor, plaintiffs have been observed dumping gallons of Dihydrogen Monoxide into soil on public school property on multiple occasions, yet they have the nerve to make accusations against my client, who is one of the largest employers in our state.