Climate project: Dr Peter Cook holds sandstone from the Otway Basin, where 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide has been stored underground.
Photo: Glen McCurtayne
July 7, 2008
IT IS technology vital to the Government’s hopes of cutting greenhouse emissions from Australia’s huge coal-fired power stations: capturing carbon dioxide from the polluting stations and burying it deep underground.
Australia’s first trial of geosequestration in the Otways reached its first milestone last week — 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide was successfully stored two kilometres underground in a depleted natural gas field.
Scientists from the Co-operative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies hope to increase that to 100,000 tonnes next year, while continuing to monitor the local geology.
The centre’s chief executive, Dr Peter Cook, who is overseeing the $40 million project, is confident that the day will come when much of the carbon dioxide produced from large industrial sources can be buried.
See the complete article here in Australia’s The Age.
Ok here is my question: What about the long term effects of such a thing? One of the biggest complaints about radioactive hazardous waste disposal is that there is no confidence in predictions of long term stability of the burial site.
Take for example water, how do we know that this formation won’t become water saturated, and that the water will dissolve CO2 into the water and carry it elsewhere only to be released into the atmosphere again? Or how do we know that the system won’t vent the CO2 back to the surface gradually due to displacement or other geologic action?
I’ll point out that CO2 is a heck of a lot more reactive and soluble than glass encapsulated nuclear waste, yet nobody seems to think a thing about it.
In my opinion, the premise of CO2 burial seems absurd not only because of the lack of supporting evidence for certain climate change, but also due to it’s lack of foresight as to the effects of the burial scheme.
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What would happen to the earth should water with the dissolved CO2 accidentally seep into Mentos-rich rock?
REPLY: Sounds like a job for the Mentos Helpline.
http://mentoshelpline.com/Mentos_150.asp
http://environmental-engineering.suite101.com/article.cfm/dangers_from_carbon_sequestration
Correct me if I am wrong. Is the CO2 under pressure? I assume it must be, You would not be able to store much of it otherwise. This would lead to possible catastrophic failures. The instant release of a few million tones of CO2 into the atmosphere would be quite deadly. I realize that it would not happen right away. But some time in the future, some enterprenurial terrorist might find a nifty way of releasing the gas. Every CO2 sequestering site will fall under Home land security watch. How do you secure a site that might span many square miles?
REPLY: The CO2 is liquefied, so yes even more volatile.
Solution: Terrorists will not be allowed to carry Mentos
Perhaps the sheep will like that seltzer water.
I would have concerns about the Co2 dissolving in water and then dissolving the calcium deposits that cement grains into sedimentary rock, like the sandstone Dr. Cook is holding, returning it to its original granular state of sand. It will no longer be a rigid substance, releasing whatever internal stresses it now maintains. Any fracturing due to loss of support structure could vent the CO2 back to the atmosphere. If old natural gas fields are to be the norm for sequestering, you can almost guarantee it is in sedimentary rock.
All levity aside, I’d hate for a repeat of Lake Nyos to occur in Australia because of a misguided attempt to sequester plant food.
“Perhaps the sheep will like that seltzer water”
I was thinking, sparking water for the masses….on tap.
It seems a common theme. Don’t know what to do with it? Just bury it. This “Out of sight – Out of mind” theology will no doubt cause issues further down the line.
Case in point, Landfill. We bury 100,000 tonnes of landfill a year in the UK resulting in an average of 300m3 of gases being released, of which 50% is methane. According to some climatologists, this gas is 15-20 times more potent than CO2 in terms of global warming. However, in real terms, the greater danger comes from explosion of the methane from unchecked build up. I’d hate to be there when it goes up!
It’s absurd to sequester the oxygen; we’ve little enough as it is.
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$40 million seems like quite a sum to spend on an experiment to store such a small amount of CO2. Sounds less like a scientific endeavor and more like an effort to appear fashionably chic by scoring political points. I shudder to think of how much money they’ll be pouring down holes if they get this project moving aggressively.
CO2 burial is, hands down, the most absurd, obtuse, ineffective idea ever to receive government funding. Senator Proxmire has spun from the ground spitting-mad.
There’s a Freeman Dyson essay at IceCap detailing undisturbed soils as the most effective means of CO2 ‘sequestering’.
Don’t you find it unusual that there are no calls for environmental impact studies?
CaCO3 – Chalk – buried everywhere in the entire world is almost entirely made up of CO2 – so I dont see a problem ????
There are many gas field with very high CO2 content. I had a prospect drilled in Indonesia which came in at 40%. One nearby contained 10 trillion cubic feet of gas, 80% CO2. The gas has been there for 10 million years, so I would say yes, is is possible to store it in old gas fields and keep it there. I doubt it is worth the expense, but it definitely can be done safely. (i’m sure it can be done poorly too)
It appears to me that the most intelligent answer to the CO2 problem is to reduce the human production of it, and let Mother Earth tend to its naturally occurring presence.
Why don’ they just turn the CO2 into coal? 😉
“Steve Keohane (09:00:43) :
I would have concerns about the Co2 dissolving in water and then dissolving the calcium deposits that cement grains into sedimentary rock, like the sandstone Dr. Cook is holding, returning it to its original granular state of sand. It will no longer be a rigid substance, releasing whatever internal stresses it now maintains. Any fracturing due to loss of support structure could vent the CO2 back to the atmosphere”
Steve— When one breaks down the cement in a rock, turning it to pulp, the permiability is reduced, not enhanced. If CO2 leaches the cement out of the sandstone (assuming that the cementing agent is CaCo3) it will seal off fractures.
In gas fields where preexisting fracture permiabily is key to production we often drill with an oil based drilling fluid so as not to react with the rock. We then do all sorts of things to increase the fractures, often injecting fluids and glass beads at much higher pressures than anyone could inject a gas. No frac job ever designed has extended 2000 meters. Two hundred would be a success.
“Winning the confidence of the community about the technology’s viability and keeping costs down are among the challenges, he said.”
Translation: “For this confidence game to work, we are going to have to step up the pace and scope of our propaganda campaign in order to hoodwink the marks and maximize our profits.” It would be better if they took that 40 mil in small bills and burned it to produce electricity. What idiots.
There is an extremely successful CO2 sequestration project running up in Weyburn Canada.
26 million tons of CO2 will be sequestered in an ageing oil field while increasing oil production by 155 million barrels (that would be $15 billion in extra revenue.)
The project has been running for five years now and is being carefully studied. Several papers have been published in Nature etc. on the results and it appears the CO2 will remain permanently sequestered. This oilfield has a long history of different flood techniques so the science was easier to do to start with.
The CO2 is coming from a coal gasification plant in North Dakota and hence the US Department of Energy is financially supporting the project. Rumour is the oil companies are paying $100/ton for the CO2 (while most people pay to get rid of the stuff, not take it) because the economics are so good.
This is the kind of project that should be pursued first.
http://www.ptrc.ca/weyburn_statistics.php
If it makes bureaucrats sleep better at night, it’s money well spent. The coal, oil and gas co’s have to be loving this. They win coming and going. Make money pulling it out of the ground, and putting it back in!
The idea behind the deep geological CO2 sequestration is to pump supercritical CO2 into formations that are already under pressure that will keep the CO2 in its supercritical state. From what I gather from talking to geologists and hearing talks on the subject: this is already a proven technology for the recovery of oil and natural gas deposits and is currently being used to that effect. The real issue with geological sequestration is concentrating the CO2 from a dilute stream as it is in coal flue gas (~80% N2), and will require ridiculous amounts of energy to do. The first targets here in the Midwest are the boondoogle ethanol plants because of the highly concentrated CO2 stream coming off of the fermentation vats.
Bob Illis makes the point I wanted to state. It is true that many aging oil fields will benefit from CO2 injections. To the extent that it is economic, go for it.
Otherwise, it is a waste of money.
CO2 has been pumped into oil fields for decades to enhance recovery. The fact that this works proves that the CO2 doesn’t escape in the short run. Also the fact that there is oil/gas there shows that the structure is pretty tight. If the CO2 does escape over a longer time period (millenia or more), who cares? The amount per year will be utterly negligible. Sequestered CO2 is escaping from underground naturally all the time, it’s called “volcanism”.
As for the energy loss at the power station, a much more efficient method is to separate the nitrogen before combustion. Then you won’t have to waste a lot of energy heating all that nitrogen and creating nitrogen oxides (and then taking them out of the flue gas). Also combustion is better in pure oxygen. This process is being actively researched.
While I agree that CO2 sequestration is probably unnecessary, it seems to me to be much cheaper and less damaging to society than any of the proposed alternatives (which is presumably the reason it is strenuously opposed by most greens).
Can someone please make a comparison of how much 100,000 tonnes of CO2 really is. I suspect it may not be very much, maybe like taking a dump truck load of sand out of the Sahara. But I don’t know.
Someone told them to stick their CO2 ” where the sun don’t shine” and they took it literally. Human stupidity knows no bounds.