Posted 12.03.2009 at 11:35 am
11 Comments
Carbon Captured
Christopher Gould/Getty Images
As geologists probe the world's rocky sediments for spots to safely store carbon dioxide underground, engineers are working on the first step of the process: separating pure CO2 from noxious smokestack emissions. An enzyme in our blood already has the trick down, however, and it captures two pounds of CO2 every day. Now a New Jersey company is trying to replicate the method.
As cells pump CO2 produced during respiration into the blood, the enzyme carbonic anhydrase converts the gas into bicarbonate for easier transport to the lungs. There the same enzyme works in reverse, turning the molecules back into the CO2 gas you exhale. This action could play the critical role of selectively capturing CO2 from mixed gas emissions for later sequestration.
The company Carbozyme is finishing up lab tests of a system that consists of millions of microscale, porous tubes coated with a synthetic version of the enzyme. As a mixture of smokestack gases passes through the tubes, the enzyme pulls CO2 from the mix and turns it into bicarbonate and back, isolating CO2 so it could be pumped underground and stored in layers of basalt rock. Based on lab tests and models, the system should use about a third less energy than other methods while avoiding the hazardous chemicals typically used to grab CO2.
Next year, Carbozyme plans to run a pilot project on coal burners at the University of North Dakota. If all goes well, it will license the tech to power plants, helping the world finally realize the concept of "clean coal."
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wow
I still think carbon sequestration is one of the dumbest ideas yet to control carbon. I just don't buy that any underground cavity will be safe from some geological burp that would release tons of the stored carbon all at once.
I concur with geebob. Burying carbon IS dumb. SO you're telling me that in the event of a 2012-like earthquake, whatever's containing the CO2 will be able to withstand that kind of force? We'd probably need forcefield containers for that and those would be supercool and have infinite applications which means we won't have them for the next 100,000 years or something.
And if it leaks back into our atmosphere, how do we get it all back underground?
That's like burying the Cloverfield monster in the hopes that it won't bother us ever and look how that turned out. That was a smart movie.
It still seems to be that the best solution would be to move towards renewables such as solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric as much as possible as soon as possible. Even if we can take fossil fuels and make them clean, there's still the problem of the supplies running out. Renewables aren't just environmentally friendly, they're more economical in the long run.
This may be a good short term fix, but not long term.
I suspect the geological burp would be no different then your typical volcano or other geological movement... this sounds like a great temporary fix lets see if it works
Pockets of oil and natural gas have remained contained underground for millions of years without escaping. The formations the CO2 would be pumped as a liquid can be a mile or more underground. You would have to hit the Earth with a comet to release it.
Ian makes a great point. Methane is lighter than CO2 and a much more powerful greenhouse gas, not to mention extremely flammable, but you don't hear any concerns about it escaping from the same types of formations that CO2 would be stored in.
If you don't think underground cavities are safe then you should really be advocating that we flare off all of our natural gas reserves because they are going to escape in an earthquake anyway and CO2 is 20 times less effective as a greenhouse gas and not explosive.
Why not use human blood to change the color of coal and natural gas. They have killed enough people to have all the blood they need. These people need to stop beating a dead horse or using its blood for ill gotten gains. Come up with a source of energy where we will not have to use our food or body parts before we can use it.
Now if only human blood could keep coal mining from resulting in mountaintop removal, miners dying in cave-ins (I suppose that's shedding human blood, in a way), and other nasty environmental effects, we could really consider it a clean energy source.
Actually oil and natural gas escape from underground all the time, the first oil fields in Holland and the US were found by following natural leaks and I saw one estimate that said 90% of all oil ever formed has leaked due to fractures in cap rock or no efficient cap rock being formed.
This doesn't mean that pumping CO2 back into reservoirs is a bad thing. But transport distances and costs are a problem. Oil tankers cannot transport gas (even liquified gas) on their return trip.
holy crap, jamesdavis... wake up on the wrong side of the bed?