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Turning CO2 Into Rock

January 6, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

CO2 rock reduce carbon emissions

As the world continues to struggle to find ways to reduce carbon emissions, there is increasing attention being paid to so-called negative emission technologies (NET), which remove and permanently sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The University of Victoria in British Columbia has brought together an international team of experts to explore the possibilities of permanently and safely sequestering CO2 as rock beneath the ocean floor.  The Solid Carbon Project seeks to extract carbon dioxide directly from the air and then, using deep-ocean technology powered by offshore solar and wind energy, inject it into sub-seafloor basalt, where it would mineralize into solid carbonate rock.

When CO2 is injected into porous basalt, a type of volcanic rock, it reacts relatively quickly with minerals to form solid carbonate, thereby permanently removing it from the atmosphere.  Because 90% of the planet’s basalt is located beneath the ocean floor, the deep ocean is the place to do this kind of carbon sequestration.

The team includes experts in ocean science, carbon mineralization, renewable energy, engineering design, and oil-and-gas drilling/injection operations. Other experts are focusing on the social and legal implications of the NET technology.

Over the next four years, the Solid Carbon Project will assess the integration of multiple existing technologies that will be needed to successfully develop this kind of carbon storage.  One of these is the direct air capture technology itself, which will need to be adapted to a renewable energy-powered offshore platform.  The best outcome technologies explored by the project will be selected for a real-world demonstration at Ocean Networks Canada’s observatory site, 9,000 feet underwater in the Cascadia Basin, off the coast of British Columbia.

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A rock-solid solution for CO2

Photo courtesy of the University of Victoria.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Pollution In The Middle Of Nowhere

July 10, 2017 By EarthWise

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/EW-07-10-17-Pollution-in-the-Middle-of-Nowhere-1.mp3

The Pitcairn Islands are a group of four volcanic islands in the South Pacific, mostly known from the famed mutiny on the British ship Bounty. Pitcairn Island itself is where many of the mutineers settled and where some of their descendants live today.   That small island, with a population of 57, is the only one of the group that is inhabited.

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Turning CO2 Into Rock

July 11, 2016 By WAMC WEB

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/EW-07-11-16-Turning-CO2-into-Rock.mp3

One of the strategies to tackle the problem of increasing greenhouse gas emissions that are resulting in climate change is Carbon Capture and Storage or CCS, which seeks to prevent CO2 from entering the atmosphere and to instead tuck it away somewhere.   A longstanding approach to doing it is to store it underground in voids such as abandoned oil and gas reservoirs.  There are various complications associated with this idea, not the least of which being potential leakage of the stored CO2.

[Read more…] about Turning CO2 Into Rock

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