Carbon Capture: Revolutionary or Radical?

Neither - It's an old idea - StatOil in Norway has been capturing carbon in an undersea cavern since 1996: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage. - Larry

Depends on whether the CO2 is being sequestered as liquid CO2 or gaseous CO2. the latter I think is safe as the Norwegians are doing it, but the former I think is not even safe not to talk of viable. Just my opinion

PS to my last posting.

There is an idea that CO2 could be stored underground – this could raise practical problems such as coping with the geothermal conditions but looking at the chemistry this would also entail locking up the oxygen! 2 atoms of oxygen for each carbon atom ! Using plastics which have similar contents of hydrogen to carbon would retain the balance.

As well a using biofuels – renewable – we should also encourage the use of plastics derived from proteins and starch as well as nylon, rather than from fossil sources.

I do not always get into the science of subjects: sometimes I am too tired to get into it and at other times I am may be busy; and often I simply give cursory responses.

In any event, I do recognize the point you are making about the intrinsic depletion oxygen that carbon sequestration causes. In fact we have also addressed this concern by suggesting the remediation of the GHG gases released into the atmosphere and or the recovery of the GHG gases from the atmosphere. In the first case we are suggesting the actual removal of the carbon from the atmosphere, while in the second case we are suggesting the use of the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere into making methanol that can be used in the preparation of biodiesel and other chemical substances.

Now as I was noting, I do not always get into the science of the topic; however, in view of the interesting suggestions by you, perhaps I should expand on my earlier post somewhat. I had opined that the approach of the Norwegians may be alright because they are actually returning back into the same cave from which the carbon dioxide was got to begin with. In that case the geological structure was already set to be able to contain carbon dioxide, besides they did not generate the GHG gas in the first place. Now regarding the other situation, of sequestering GHG gas as liquid in underground caverns as being a bad idea, I said so because of my concerns about the "gassisity" of the walls - gassisity is the ability of a solid object to allow the permeation of gases through it walls by "molecular conduction of the gas" under conditions of high pressure difference between the two sides of the walls. This is the reason for using getters in Cathode Ray tubes and Fluorescent Light Bulb in order to main the vacuum that would otherwise be compromised by the gassisity of the glass that is being driven by pressure imbalance.

Now I am of the opinion that the liquid carbon dioxide sequestered will upon contact with the walls evaporate into thin film of gas at the inner surface of the storage wall. This gas I am afraid may then because of the inherent gassisity of the walls get "conducted" through the walls from the inside to the outside effectively resulting in sustained leakage of the gas with the potential of ultimately diffusing through the rocks to the surface and causing death. Now, as far as I know, there is no known man-developed method for addressing this problem of gassisity of the walls. This then is the basis of my having reservations about carbon dioxide sequestration as a solution to the problem of Global warming.

What is the problem - carbon can be captured easily but we have to get our act together. ALL plastics are carbon based - so fuse all recycled plastic together into blocks - if you mix it with recycled paper first you can make artificial wood which appears to indestructible (done in South Africa) - if wood can be used for construction then so can this! ? with a bit of subsidy they could be converted into low cost cabins for the third world and so take the carbon out of circulation.

These blocks can be hidden in the desert regions or sunk into the ocean.

They could be used for fuel under controlled conditions and substitute a recyclable source to replace newly harvested fossil sources.

Perhaps the encouragement of the use of nylon which can be made form vegetable (renewable) sources would help.

All PET and similar bottles must be made returnable as also should glass. The bottlers must carry the can and be responsible for their own litter. They are saving money by the use of non-returnables and passing the cost onto the taxpayer. They do not need to wash the bottles they could just recycle. Recycling will reduce the need for fossil derived chemicals.

The use of

One has to look at Both ways. Reduce carbon dioxide emission and absorb carbondioxide from air.

Apart from burning of fuel,breathing of tree after sunset ,fermentaion of any product in land ,factory or by the animals,Forest fires,explosions,firewood for warming of homes etc etc, we need to quantify roughly what contributes how much.

What can be eliminated/cutdown/captured locally ( eg absorb CO2 from fermentation in a brewery and use in bottling) etc will depened on that.

For any item Carbon foot print estimation can be a guide line. A person in his life time - how much he gives out as carbondioxide? So less people ,less carbon dioxide!

In other way a tree with green leaves is net absorber of carbon dioxide. How much for different tree in its life time is an area needs to be looked into. But one thing is clear Ever green trees may be absorbing more carbondioxide comapred to the ones which shed leaves!

If we have enough trees planted to take care of net addional carbon dioxide we can still be at the present level.

One item of interest is what Toyota did for absorbing cabon dioxide. They made a green house with leafy plants and fed the atmosphere with carbondioxide rich gas . For the night they used artificial light to continue the process ? Can the similar system have wide application?

Can any industry be rated as how much carbon dioxide it is emanating and how much it is helping by plantation within the factory area?

I think rating be there for all including adult person/cows/elephants/cars/buses/fuels burned etc etc so that the wareness is greater .

Consider the law of conservation of matter - there is just as much carbon around now as there was at the beginning of time - it is just in a different chemical combinatrion.

Trouble comes from Fossil fuels - converting them back into carbon dioxide - at some time (gigayears ago) the air must have been a soup of CO₂ and plants were profuse - these plants upon dying must have formed a very thick layer of compost. Due to volcanic action these layers of veg matter were covered over and eventually converted into coal. Seem that petroleum came from sea creatures but there must have been a similar scenario. All this carbon was "fixed" as the fossil fuels we are now tapping. Putting this carbon dioxide into the air is beyond the capacity of modern vegetation - so we are "fixing" oxygen and converting it back into the soup it was back at the beginning using the stored carbon. Before long we will have the dinosaurs back as we get to their climatic conditions.

Somehow we must get the balance back so - use biofuels and convert as much carbon into fixed product as we can. I suggest that all plastic waste could be fused together and converted into inert blocks. Build Disneyland or make artificial mountains out in the desert to dispose of these. There is a company here processing paper and plastic to produce an artificial timber which so far appears to be indestructible and if used to build water tanks or houses would give a first rate way of stashing it away. The more carbon we can tie up the better.

Stopping desertification and greening of deserts...

Dear All

Capture Carbon is not the solution , some companies will make some money from it

but let them push it to the bottom of the oceans so some planets can use it for their own growing .

what makes the real "Global Worming" is the SULFORE that we are receiving

from using all DIESEL and PETROL ENGINES and by using COAL FOR THE PRODUCTION OF POWER AND ELECTRICITY .

THE SOLUTION IS THEIR ....

SO KEEP SMILING ..

YOURS FAITHFULLY

J.W

The know-how and technology is in-hand. The devil is in the details and cost. For a coal fired power plant, it will cost about 20% more to build than a comparable state-of-the-art emission controlled plant. That is some $300 MILLION more. This does not include costs for a pipeline , injection wells, etc. It will need about 20% more coal to deliver the same amount of power to the 'grid'. AND the power will cost about 30% more per unit to produce than from a comparable new conventional plant.

I personally believe the CO2 as a greenhouse gas contributor to global warming is horse-puckey dreamed up by the same kind of 'quants' that invented CDO's and CDS financial products to 'reduce the risk' in making loans to people who could not possible repay them.

Water vapor is 20 times more effective as a greenhouse gas, and the atmosphere has 20 times more of it than CO2. Same for Methane--20 times and 20 again. Lo and behold, these 'scientists' finally figured out flatulence from animals is a big contributor! How about that from people? Population has doubled in the last 100 years--how much is that? Lots. Maybe we saved the climate by slaughtering those millions of bison in the 1800's?. Oh--by the way, CO2 emissions from healthy grasslands is another BIG contributor that was not previously counted--gotta pave the pastures.

We eliminated TEL from gasoline starting in 1975. TEL caused large amounts of very fine highly reflective particles in the upper atmosphere (man-made volcano type particulates) which reflects a lot of sunlight. Now we have 'clean air' and its getting hotter down here--DUH!

What we need are more high altitude clouds. We know how to make them--but thaat would not call for more government control of our lives--remember government LIKES to control its subjects. Bureaucracies will grow to consume ALL resources.

At present US alone burns 8.35 BILLION Barrels a year just for transporattion (22 Million barrels per day consumption). So if not all of it but significant amount of it is being decomposed into CO and CO2. This is besides Coal Plants and other industrial plans, refinaries releasing carbon. I say forget capturing it but atleast reduce the amount being released.