Effect of Injecting CO into Soil

Would you do this over 1 square foot, one square mile or one state?

How would you do it? Why would you do it?

Who pays?

Where would you get the CO?

Is there a CO injection infrastructure in place, or will it have to be built?

Multiple reasons:

1. Carbon sequestration from agricultural equipment.

2. Possible pesticide for soil pests like nematodes using shallow injection.

3. Deeper injection, as with a modified sub-soiler could capture the carbon long term, depending on soil type, etc.

4. The CO would come from the ag equipment itself, most of which are Diesel powered.I am sure a pump would be needed to prevent excessive back pressure on the exhaust system.

5. Carbon credits could help pay for the device, as well the potential use as a low cost pesticide.

6. There would be very little additional fuel costs associated with this as it could be done in parallel with regular tillage.

Too bad I do not have the money to patent this concept and associated devices.

Anyone want to put up some investment capital?

I think this would have an adverse and long term effect on the crops above and groundwater supplies below, one that may create more problems than its use would solve.

That's my feeling anyway. Can any chemists comment?

.........and CO₂ capture in soils happens already from that absorbed which falls as "acid rain".

I have found some info on using soil to sequester carbon for long periods of time.It mainly refers to organic matter, but it should work just a well for any type of carbon.

Link below:

http://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/jan02/feature_carbon.html

Please read the info at the link provided, then reply with your opinion.

My method would inject the CO below the range of the plant root system,and in certain clay type soils, it could remain captive for hundreds of years.

This idea would not make a great difference, but every little bit helps.

Another take on sinking CO (or CO2) into Soils

Not wanting to knock out the topic of CO into Soil altogether, there is mention in the literature of the role of Microorganisms in removal of trace gases [CO, CH4, NOx, H2, etc] from the atmosphere. I would imagine that this happens at relatively small rates in nature because of the low mass transfer between air and soil. It may well be that injection of gases into the soil could result in reductions/ consumptions by certain microorganisms as the article by Ralph Conrad suggests. But at which rates? And what would be the limits? Would it be possible to sequestrate CO or any of these gases [meaning on industrial levels]? And if so, how would it affect the soil? Personally, I don't believe that sinking CO or even CO2 into agricultural soils on an industrial scale is viable. But let's get some replies from people who know a bit more.

Again, I would think that sinking CO gas into soils is not a good idea because of its energy and commercial value and because of the sheer volumes involved. For small scale CO gas emissions I would try to capture the CO and then sell it to companies that use it commercially. Now when we are talking CO2 (carbon dioxide) then it becomes worthwhile as there are tons of it available and the owner might even pay you to take it off their hands. For those that are interested, soil monitoring of soil CO2 is described in an article by Russo and Abney (http://www.lane-ag.org/pubs/soil%20gasses/111292-RUSSO.pdf). (Sorry! Link no longer available.)

Alternatively you could receive benefits through carbon-credits for your CO2 sink or CO2 capture efforts. The literature often used the term Carbon Sink and as this reference explains, it has to do with CO2 (carbon Dioxide and not with CO). To be fair to the debate, there is reference to a bacteria that is capable of transforming CO into Hydrocarbons as reported by Lee, Hu and Rubbe (http://ec.europa.eu/environment/integration/research/newsalert/pdf/219na2.pdf) (Sorry! Link no longer available.) They state that scientists discovered an enzyme found in a common soil bacterium that can do just this. So it is possible in practice. Bit is it possible commercially and will it work on a large scale and in agricultural environments? We must remember that these ideas are all still in the research phase and only on the lab scale.

It could well be worthwhile for R&D outfits to follow up further from Lee, Hu and Rubbe but with regard to application of these microbes and the said enzymes in highly controlled environments in biochemical industrial plants as opposed to (uncontrolled) soil in open nature.

No problem HiTek.

Inyecting CO gas into deep soil, and making it stick there centuries. Yeah, right. What professor said that, without experiencing it for himself??

And you are right. Darwin's law have to work somewhere, after all.

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The law is about editing oneself out of the gene pool.

Sorry for the wife and kids. For the rest of you my previous warning about poisoning stands.

Hello HiTekRedNek,

Indeed there is research deat out there, much of it appears to be lab based scale and therefore not enormously pertinent to answering your query.

Carbon monoxide is a strong reducing agent and can be considered as a fuel gas in its own right as 'Producer gas' it can combust or be catalysed toto carbon dioxide.

It is known that the soil is proactive in processing vast amounts of CO already and predominantly the action converts the Co to carbon dioxide (suggested conversion c500Tg/year).

The issues seem to involve the effects of the CO on the resident population of microbial organisms which are resident in the soil stratum into which you propose to inject the CO as there are both anaerobic and aerobic bacteria present. We are talking about 'soil respiration' and the migration of gases into and out of the stratum will strongly influence the development of the organisms.

Clearly at the depth you suggest there could be water table influences as well as root activity, therefore the process could well transit several phases in the course of a year.

Trying to create a uniform gas concentration over a sizeable acreage would be quite a challenge and the performance of such an investment would difficult to predict.

You can read about the subject in the ''Applied & Environmental Microbiology'' Conrad and Seile Sept 1980 p 437-445.

Good luck,

Massey.

Thanks for all of the valuable feedback from everyone.The intent was to capture the exhaust from agricultural machinery instead of spewing it into the atmosphere.

I was not speaking of a commercial scale operation.

I was under the mistaken idea that the exhaust was primarily CO, but have since learned that it is mostly co2 instead, unless the engine is poorly tuned.

Dr Rice, in my offered link, speaks of the ability of certain soils to capture and hold co2 for hundreds of years.I realize that he is speaking of co2 from organic sources,such as decaying plant material, but would this work for gaseous co2 injected into the same type soil?

This is probably just a wild-hair brained idea, I know, but it may be food for thought for others more knowledgeable in this area.

No problem with wild-card ideas. Sometimes great, novel technologies or applications can spring from these. And as a previous discussion of a few days ago highlighted : There is no such thing as something that cannot be done. I for one welcome crazy ideas. But once identifying an idea, the next step is to see whether it works. Then to scale it up. Then to see whether it is feasible ito economics. In the case of this idea, there is lab-demonstration of parts of the idea. But so far no scale-up to pilot plant level can be seen in the literature. Great that you have seen the distinction between CO and CO2. I presume we can now concentrate on CO2 in the rest of the discussion.

This discussion did bring out the role that microbes can play in new solutions of this nature. All development work in this area appears still to be on a lab scale. Nevertheless, this does represent another branch of potential routes wrt carbon reduction. This route cannot be written off as yet. It still needs to be explored further. I personally have looked at other routes in the whole effort at Carbon Reduction. Could others perhaps elaborate on their ideas at Carbon Reduction Systems that utilize the CO2 as opposed to simply sinking it. In this way Carbon Dioxide can be seen as a raw material. While it lacks energy content ito combustion, things change when we consider different ways to add energy to the CO2. For those people that are exploring the application of these enzymes and bacteria in this application, I would think it is a good avenue to explore.

Please do consider what alternative methods may be possible (apart from the good old methods used by nature - Photosynthesis). A working commercial solution to converting carbon dioxide into some form of usable energy (e.g. hydrocarbons) does in fact translate to the holy grail of energy ito transportation fuels. These days there is talk of artificial photosynthesis. I have not explored any of this. On paper at least, I have looked at a method involving energy addition to the CO2.

I dont want to go to deeply into this area in this place as it is probably deserves a discussion in its own right. Topic would be : Production of Synthetic Fuels from Carbon Dioxide (CO2) this time. And not Carbon Monoxide (CO), which is already done commercially as pointed out earlier above.

Please do give some feed-back on this as a Topic for discussion.

Production of Synthetic Fuels from Carbon Dioxide (CO2)

We do that by using one of several plant species, depending on what additional work we want to do (like absorbing radioactive Cesium from contaminated soil) to concentrate the Carbon Dioxide as a mix of various polysaccharides and oligosaccharides through photosynthesis. We then use a multi-microbe cocktail to break the complex sugars down to their 5- and 6-carbon simple sugars, use another cocktail to ferment the simple sugars to fuel ethanol and Carbon Dioxide, which is sold as a refrigerant. Pollutants (like Cesium, in this case) are sealed in cement and shielded in lead for deep ocean or solar launch disposal. There may be alternative solutions.

I knew the difference between co and co2, but I was under the misunderstanding that diesel engines pumped out a lot of CO, by virtue of looking at the black color of their exhaust, which to me indicated incomplete combustion.I was not pursuing a commercial scale enterprise of capturing CO, but merely a cheap way to capture some of it at the source.I was anticipating a cost-neutral or minimal cost method of accomplishing this goal. In view of the feedback I have received, it may not be possible.The reason for posting this question was to examine the feasibility of the idea.

Thanks to all who contributed.

I will now move on to my next endeavor, which has a better chance of succeeding:

Peace in the middle east.

Diesels also produce significant levels of NOx's, which would cause other problems along with the other trace elements of diesel combustion (it is dirtier than gasoline combustion).