By Hugh Price
In New Haven, W.Va., the Mountaineer Power Plant is using a complicated chemical process to capture about 1.5 percent of the carbon dioxide it produces. The gas is cooled to a liquid at a pressure of about 95 atmospheres and pumped 2,375 meters down to a sandstone formation, where it is meant to remain indefinitely. The objective is to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere from the coal burning at the plant.
This certainly seems to be doing it the hard way. Extracting just this 1.5 percent of the CO2 from the plant’s flue requires a $100 million investment, and whether the gas will remain underground or bubble to the surface is in question.
Fortunately, there is a way to capture and store excess carbon from the atmosphere that is cheap, efficient and environmentally friendly. It relies on two technologies that have been in use for more than 8,000 years: agriculture and the garbage heap.
…
The biggest problem with this approach may be that it’s so low-tech. No green-technology subsidies are required, so there may not be a natural constituency for it. On the other hand, environmentalists should love it. What could be greener than growing plants? And for those concerned about the economy, this approach provides a low-cost method of reducing the country’s carbon footprint without increasing the cost of energy. It is also reversible. If current concerns about CO2 concentrations turn out to be unwarranted, the stockpiled material will be readily available for use. What could be simpler?
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That’s so crazy, it just might work!
A nice, neat idea, but it offends my gardening soul. Better, I think, to compost ALL of it, and use the resulting compost to enhance soil fertility and plant growth. Besides, all of that uncomposted plant waste is going to need a very big hole indeed to put it in. And what about all the carbon dioxide generated by transporting it to landfill sites? And how are you going to stop air from getting at the stuff? Back to the drawing board chaps!
We could contribute to improve it. As you know, we , humans, we are made out of carbon and water, thus we gladly acknowledge the contribution of the greenies by self-donating their corpses in order to alleviate the burden of the world of carrying such a lot of carbon and water (both, as they themselves contend, generating positive feedbacks). Such an attitude will reduce the carbon problem to its minimum, thanks that this process will be exponential.
Be sure that your contribution will be remembered by us, and more importantly, by mother Gaia herself.
Idiocy on the cheap is still idiocy.
This is what nature does all the time!. The next time Gaia comes with her broomstick to wipe some of us out, don´t complain: It´s Gaia making compost!
A direct quote from the article “With an overabundance of CO2 in the atmosphere…”
When was that decided?
Even better than just piling it up is to turn it into charcoal, and use the “biochar” to enhance the soil for higher crop output. The carbon stays put in the soil for thousands of years. The indians in the Amazon did this thousands of years ago and the resulting soil is still more fertile than “regular” soil. It is mined and sold in garden stores in Latin America. If it was done worldwide, it could reverse CO2 buildup and improve agriculture at the same time. Apparently, the very high surface area of the charcoal provides a perfect environment for soil micro-organisms. Charcoal can be made in a 50 gallon oil drum, as I myself have done, or scaled up easily. Thousands of years old tech…
One problem with large piles of vegetation – they get hot and stink. Check out a cotton gin sometime after the harvest. Look around back where they pile the cotton meal 20 or 30 feet deep or more (huge black, smelly mountain – you can’t miss it ). On the other hand. it makes some of the best soil amendment and fertilizer going, and I get a couple truckloads every year – free.
There is a defect of intellect inherent in the discussion of carbon sequestration, that is, that carbon sequestration is a desirable human activity. The impetous leap to cloister carbon implies an attempt to garner intellectual cred/siphon tax dollars on the part of those who do not realize there is no reason to sequester carbon. *cue “Circle of Life”* “Class, class, let us now remember that carbon is a part of what we and all other forms of life on Mother Earth are constructed. Will the Karbon Kuarantiners in back please sit down, and remind themselves that AGW was a hoax begun in the 80’s and now is as popular as “I Love You, Miss Robot” by the Buggles?”
Several Comments/questions
Sounds like a lot of energy will be wasted to cool and compress the CO2. I recall that the efficiency of a power plant is significantly reduced with current CO2 capture and sequestration.
Do we really want to take oxygen from the atmosphere forever?
I’ve long said the best way to capture CO2 is to send as much food, paper, carboard, plastic to land fill as possible.
If Greens really did want to reduce CO2, then they wouldn’t waste our time recycling all that rubbish/garbage, but instead praise people who put as much as possible in the rubbish bin/trash can.
But, THINK!, have you noticed that every green proposition is tanatic?, enthropic, against Eros, against Life itself?.
Their dream world: A Giant mountain of human compost!
Life is Nature´s “trick” to overcome Death
Let´s awake: They are the preachers of Thanatos, the pontifices of doom, the church of Negation, proclaiming the Gospel of Hate!
We may sing:
Love it´s a many splendoured thing,
It´s like the April Rose that grows in the early Spring…
It´s Nature´s way of giving,
A Reason to believing,
The Golden Crown that makes
A Man A King!
I’ve often thought this seems like a potential solution. It isn’t without its issues, but it could be done without expensive infrastructure, big plans, etc.
David Wright says:
September 20, 2010 at 5:30 am
Carbon is bound into the plant material. Sequestering the leafy materials probably isn’t the best way to go, but what about more the woody parts. If they are kept from decomposing they’ll keep the carbon sequestered indefinitely. A good example is the way some antique furniture has kept its carbon sequestered for hundreds of years.
MikeEE
The problem here will be that there’s no incentive at all to do it. Most other emmission reduction ideas – nuclear, wind, solar, efficiency measures etc – hold out the hope that they could be cheaper than the status quo one day. For this, you really need to pay someone to do it because the emitter is very removed from the guy growing weeds. The only ways to make this happen really are either for a government to pay people to do it, or to somehow impose a price on carbon – both very popular ideas!
Why not just plant and grow trees? Wouldn’t that do?
Low tech is great, but this is very misguided. Maybe it is meant to be satire? Agricultural “waste” typically goes back into the soil. This helps to maintain soil structure and fertility thereby reducing the amount of fertilizer and irrigation required. The assumption that the amount of waste is atleast equal to the production is ridiculous. Has the author ever seen a corn field after it has been combined for silage? If there is waste, the first aim should be to adjust systems to make as much of the waste as possible stay in the fields. Then, if there is still waste, pile it up, or burn it for electricity production, or pyrolisize it for bio-oil, etc. Of course, these last options assume CO2 even matters.
Where’s the profit?
How does this bolster Gore?
Where’s the Governmental control?
What’s in it for the U.N. ?
Major stumbling blocks, I’d say.
I thought about this a while back when the greenies were talking about forest as carbon sequesterers (?) My thought was to use bamboo, its hardy and fast growing, and would be easy to harvest.
Or we could pipe the CO2 into the forests…
Ecotretas
The hypothesis that man made CO2 emissions will cause global warmin, climate change or global climate disruption is false hence there should be no need to carry out expensive methods for carbon sequestration or to stop composting.
Here in the UK in the mid 1980’s the water utilities were privatised and people started to pay large bills for water consumption. People moaned “what next they’ll be charging us for the air we breathe”
Any business bill for energy has a Climate Change Levy, so just a small step before we are charged for breathing clean air?
Keith Kloor recently gave a link to a massive rejuvenation project for New York, which plans to transform the enormous Fresh Kills landfill zone into a thriving nature park. It will be three times as big as Central Park. Methane is already being captured from the off gassing of the garbage and is used to power nearby houses.
http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_your_park/fresh_kills_park/html/fresh_kills_park.html
Spending millions instead of billions (or trillions) dealing with what is essentially a non-issue (CO2’s effect on climate) is a start in the right direction.
It’s still wasting money, but a lot less, and it allows some face saving of the political class while we wind down the AGW juggernaut.
This process requires a lot of water.
Does it really matter whether there are 3 molecules of CO2 or 4 molecules of CO2 per 10,000 other molecules in the atmosphere? Get a life, folks!
The not very secret purpose for CO2 sequestration legislation is to make coal plants more expensive than renewables so utilities will be forced to phase them out.
The not very secret purpose for “clean coal” technologies is to pretend that coal can be a clean fuel if we just put enough money into R&D, so we just need utility subsidies today, not carbon legislation.