To prevent further damage from global warming, we, as a putative civilization can ‘bury’ carbon. Contrarily, every year nowadays, we pump nearly 40 billion tons of CO2 into the air from our industries, transportation systems, and land clearing.
Some CO2 is ‘handy’ to grab at the source, such as an electric power plant or cement kiln. The CO2 can be cleaned up at bit then pressurized and injected into deep rock formations. There, it may react with various types of rock to make relatively stable carbonate compounds. These won’t rise from their graves to put CO2 back into the air, we hope and predict.
There are challenges - number one being the cost of the process. That’s a legitimate tax on producing power from fossil fuels. It’s not yet readily accepted. The technologies are not yet mature enough for large-scale deployment. A constraint is that the total storage capacity is limited, as pointed out by Matthew Glidden and 10 colleagues in 7 nations.
CO2 stored in rock must be buried 1 km deep or more to keep it in the supercritical state, but less than 2.5 km deep to avoid disrupting bedrock that can cause earthquakes and CO2 release. Undersea storage has constraints imposed by neighboring nations. The primary solution to CO2 accumulation in the air should always be, don’t put it up there in the first place. Reduce the use of fossil fuels.
This has been an outreach activity of the Las Cruces Academy, viewable at GreatSchools.org.
Source: Nature, 4 Sept. 25, 124-132.
Image: Wikipedia
