"Pilot projects bury carbon dioxide in basalt." Report from Nature News & Comment_26 July 2013

 JEFF TOLLEFSON writes in Nature

"By early August, scientists will have pumped 1,000 tonnes of pure carbon dioxide into porous rock far below the northwestern United States. The goal is to find a permanent home for the carbon dioxide generated by human activities.

Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington, began the injections into the Columbia River Basalt formation near the town of Wallula on 17 July. The rock contains pores created as many as 16 million years ago, when magma flowed across what is now the Columbia River Basin. Bubbles of CO2 migrated to the edges of the magma as it cooled, forming layers of holes sandwiched between solid rock (see 'Rock steady').

In pumping emissions back underground, “we are returning the carbon dioxide from whence it came”, says Pete McGrail, an environ­mental engineer at the PNNL who is heading the experiment, part of a larger energy-department programme on ways to sequester carbon."

KEEP-UP THE GOOD WORK LADS.
ON THE STORAGE SIDE OF THE CO2 OUTPUT ACCOUNTANCY (IN) BALANCE THE FUTURE APPEARS TO LIE IN SUCH INITIATIVES.

I WILL POST AGAIN ON REDUCTIONS ON THE PRODUCTION SIDE OF CO2 - NOT AS GOOD AS HOPED!




Read the full article freely available in The Journal Nature entitled  "Pilot projects bury carbon dioxide in basalt : Nature News & Comment" (pdf).

The teraton challenge. A review of fixation and transformation of carbon dioxide, Danish work brought to us by RCS-The Royal Chemical Soc.,UK.

A few months ago a Prof. of Chemistry friend at a major Univ in France expressed scepticism concerning the CCS - carbon capture and sequestration, the geological and geoengineering response to increases in CO2 a well documented GWG-global warming gas. (Increases roughly since James Watts invention of the steam engine. (cf. "David JC MacKay's book "without hot air" free online) My chemist friend's objection concerned dangers of stored carbon escape since CO2 is not in a chemically combined and imprisoned form. Of course the physicists, and geological engineers consider that suitably stable, deep sites may be found whereby high pressures in deep wells is sufficient to maintain the CO2 in the liquid, or pseudo liquid (super-saturated) state to remain simple. More audacious consider that by avoiding sequestration in valleys especially inhabited valley even if there is gas escape there will be no serious consequences.

Whatever, I am extremely pleased to find this Danish work via my blog listed RSS feed whereby CO2 mitigation is suggested by physical-chemistry methods which should come closer to meeting the approval of my chemistry friend and perhaps suggest themes of research to improve the overall mastering of our incredible capacity to generate CO2 in energy production,industry and transportation.

PS. I shall run a spell check via my blog post of this Google Sidewiki.

en référence à : Energy & Environmental Science Articles (afficher sur Google Sidewiki)

CO2 Storage CCS and or CCU CO2 Use, Geological _Applied Earth Science Input,EU-China Geologists Co-operate to Find Onshore CO2 Sinks

There are more questions than answers in this post, sorry.

My friends and colleagues at MW-Materials World have pointed once more to good approaches and co-operation between Geologists in the EU and in China to fully determine sites suitable for CO2 storage and sequestration: Capturing carbon dioxide in China by MW's reporter R. Mehta.

Perhaps as any good interview should MW's R. Mehta report, raises more questions for comment and debate than answers. The conversation between MW's R. Mehta and Mike Stephenson appears to be good news, and it most certainly is. However I deliberately chose the word storage as opposed to sequestration,favoured perhaps by those concerned with geological time scales. Don't get me wrong, experience in high reliability energy materials (aero-engine, nuclear, petrochem..) strongly recommends aiming for the highest standards, the imponderables of practise can lead to a somewhat lower standards. On the other hand, I believe that engineers and policy makers, not to mention the now GW-GHG sensitive, general public would like estimates, orders of magnitudes, of what "significant onshore storage" means and better we would all appreciate hard facts and best "state of the art" decisions. I recently heard that two French Parliamentarians (independently of political bias) already consider, that globally, there are insufficient suitable CO2 storage-sequestration site (I'll check political quotes). They hope to lead a CO2 users "Lobby". I would expect that the French Deputies have consulted our colleagues at BRGM-France's Geological and Mining Research Authority. That being said the fact that BGS_EU-China are concerned with energy generation is also good news. My scant blogged Venn diagramme: 1. Mining, 2. Power Generation, 3. Materials focused on CO2 sequestration (practice) and many IOM3-Maney online publications still indicates that CO2 storage and sequestration is the weak-link in in-situ global main power generation processes(ie. fossil fuel based). I would be pleased of any reaction and further information following this report, interview and conversation. Finally it is good news that the main new main CO2 emitter over-taking USA, (I believe) is getting involved and accepts assistance.

Links are provided on MW's Environment and Sustainability page5, March 2009 .

Further Reading:
1.EU-China CO2-coach programme
2.NZEC
3. BSG-British Geological Survey's Nascent Site
4. EU Scientific Authority for CO2 storage pdf. News Release 16 March2009. and direct link to the site CO2 GeoNet

Get your Carbon Sequestration Site on the Map - Reduce GHG emissions, Improve Company-Gov Image, Visibility, ROI...for fun Beat GeoSAT-Ubuki

Industrialists, Governments are you still stalling?

Get your Carbon Sequestration Site on the Map.

Engage in an "Open-Book management approach" to CCS-Carbon Capture and Storage.

Seven Perceived advantages are $, £, €, ¥, ₨, 元 (your choice?):
-Improve your company or government-national image,
-Increased visibility from the growing environmentally conscience internet based society.
-Get on the side of scientifically based ecology and have a positive, caring, increased influence in national, and global issues
-Take a strong marketing position.
-Make "Or-well's " big-brother monitoring "obsolete"(for fun) or more accurately reduced expensive satellites construction and launch, simply to an optimum-a minimun of wise precautionary measures.
In short
-Increase credibility with a badly disallusioned public-voters, smaller share holders, the market.

Did I forget your currency?
As long as it's only money, pick it's symbol here LINK and drop me line.

Industrialists, Governments still stalling? Whatever the reason, get your Carbon Sequestration Site on the Map, thanks to an initiative from The Scottish Centre for Carbon Storage, School of Geo-sciences, University of Edinburgh

The Centre's interactive map shows commercially significant CCS sites (planned or operational) around the globe.

It is designed as an interactive resource for the emerging CCS industry. We invite industry members to locate their relevant site on the google map and feed information into the map as their project progresses.

The SCCS map focuses on proposed full scale or large CCS sites around the world. 'Large' refers to the amount of CO2 that is planned to be injected. Any site planning on injecting over 700,000 tonnes CO2 per year has been included. 700,000 tonnes was picked as an arbitrary amount because of the large number of smaller research/demo plants. The smaller sites are of course significant, and will be added to the google map nearer the time that they go live.


View the SC-CS Map, try-it, learn and engage; register your Carbon Sequestration Site [Link html] .

6.986 tons of CO2 injected underground at Ketzen Germany _ CCS CO2SINK-Project _Progress to date

Up to January 11th 2009, 6.986 tons of CO₂ are injected in the underground at Ketzen

The CO₂SINK project started in April 2004. The project centres on careful observation of the effects of injecting a significant amount of CO₂ into a reservoir.

Their website CO₂SINK will provide information about the project as it develops, general material about CO₂ capture and storage, and links to other sites. Their site also contains a page where your views or questions can be posted to the project team.

The project is coordinated by the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences.

Incidentally I had the pleasure of reviewing the book Continental Scientific Drilling edited by a team from GFZ covering a wide spectrum of interdisciplinery themes contibuted by a renowned international scientists and engineers not only from the physical sciences but also from biosciences.

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