From the “MTBE is perfectly safe department” and Duke University:
Leaking underground CO2 storage could contaminate drinking water
DURHAM, N.C. — Leaks from carbon dioxide injected deep underground to help fight climate change could bubble up into drinking water aquifers near the surface, driving up levels of contaminants in the water tenfold or more in some places, according to a study by Duke University scientists.
Based on a year-long analysis of core samples from four drinking water aquifers, “We found the potential for contamination is real, but there are ways to avoid or reduce the risk,” says Robert B. Jackson, Nicholas Professor of Global Environmental Change and professor of biology at Duke.
“Geologic criteria that we identified in the study can help identify locations around the country that should be monitored or avoided,” he says. “By no means would all sites be susceptible to problems of water quality.”
The study appears in the online edition of the journal Environmental Science & Technology, at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es102235w.
Storing carbon dioxide deep below Earth’s surface, a process known as geosequestration, is part of a suite of new carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies being developed by governments and industries worldwide to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions entering Earth’s atmosphere. The still-evolving technologies are designed to capture and compress CO2, emissions at their source – typically power plants and other industrial facilities – and transport the CO2 to locations where it can be injected far below the Earth’s surface for long-term storage. The U.S. Department of Energy, working with industry and academia, has begun the planning for at least seven regional CCS projects.
“The fear of drinking water contamination from CO2 leaks is one of several sticking points about CCS and has contributed to local opposition to it,” says Jackson, who directs Duke’s Center on Global Change. “We examined the idea that if CO2 leaked out slowly from deep formations, where might it negatively impact freshwater aquifers near the surface, and why.”
Jackson and his postdoctoral fellow Mark G. Little collected core samples from four freshwater aquifers around the nation that overlie potential CCS sites and incubated the samples in their lab at Duke for a year, with CO2 bubbling through them.
After a year’s exposure to the CO2, analysis of the samples showed that “there are a number of potential sites where CO2 leaks drive contaminants up tenfold or more, in some cases to levels above the maximum contaminant loads set by the EPA for potable water,” Jackson says. Three key factors – solid-phase metal mobility, carbonate buffering capacity and electron exchanges in the overlying freshwater aquifer – were found to influence the risk of drinking water contamination from underground carbon leaks.
The study also identified four markers that scientists can use to test for early warnings of potential carbon dioxide leaks. “Along with changes in carbonate concentration and acidity of the water, concentrations of manganese, iron and calcium could all be used as geochemical markers of a leak, as their concentration increase within two weeks of exposure to CO2,” Jackson says.
Gosh, we really don’t want people drinking the pollutant co2!
If it’s pumped into the ground, free Coca Cola??
Anyway, if it’s pumped into the ground, isn’t this what will happen?
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs172-96/
Nothing like CO2 migrating into moist limestone substrata to make for huge sinkholes.
“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy!” ~ Robert Burns
I don’t think that the producers of Perrier Water, and other naturally carbonated beverages, ever complained about CO2 contamination of their products.
Nothing new about this. EPA considered ground water contamination when they reviewed CCS regulations over a year ago. Even NRDC bought into CCS as a way to reduce CO2 emissions. Most storage sites are deep below groundwater reservoirs and are capped with impermible geologic structures. DOE NETL is developing Monitoring, Verification and Accounting guidelines for CCS (see http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/carbon_seq/core_rd/mva.html)
So this is all well under control if it is economically viable and justified.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/02/profoundly-non-feasible-option.html
Nuff said.
DaveE.
The real question is: if there are leaks from CO2 sequestration, as is surely inevitable, and those leaks do cause contamination of drinking water supplies, how will the problem be solved? Availability of safe drinking water supplies is a big issue in some places, and natural contamination of aquifers is common. This part of the issue needs to be addressed.
Does this mean all natural spring water would become sparkaling? Because I hate sparkaling spring water.
I just spit out my Diet Coke™
Don’t these idiots understand that CO2 sequestration is O2 sequestration. Eventually, we will run out of oxygen to breathe, if they sequester carbon dioxide.
Perhaps they should reduce the CO2 to carbon, and store that down in the salt mines; we will need it to blacken the ice when the big freeze gets underway.
I think acidifying of water leads to increased solubility of other minerals /like metals/ in the water. CO2 itself is not a contaminant in this sense.
Just an odd thought, but the potential for large above ground leaks (and possible suffocation) does exist for future civilizations. Similar risk to storing nuclear waste? at least as presented by the greens?
Add a little flavoring to your tap water, and voila! Free Soda! (VBG)
Researcher said: “By no means would all sites be susceptible to problems of water quality.” They have established this how? Its unfortunate that the abstract doesn’t indicate how many of the samples did or did not show significant changes. I hope the statement is based on significantly more than theory, however.
Meanwhile – if they discover leaks from a hypothetical underground storage site, is there even any way to mitigate it?
I prefer carbonated water myself. 😀
So when is the EPA going to make rain a felony? Or pumping water from an aquifer something that gets you life? (in prison, that is). Certainly water is a more abundant, more effective GHG than CO2 ever dreamed of being. Will we be required to pump all our rivers into the aquifers of the Earth? Will oceans have to be covered with plastic to prevent evaporation? Will it be illegal to irrigate? Certainly H2O is FAR more dangerous than CO2!
How does anthropogenic sequestration capacity compare to the natural capacity of a thunderstorm, or cloud cover over a power plant stack, or moist alkaline soil, or a forest?
How many times do you unbelievers have to be told? The Science Is Settled!
Rational Debate says:
“Meanwhile – if they discover leaks from a hypothetical underground storage site, is there even any way to mitigate it?”
They pumped it down there under pressure, just open the value and let it out. Storing CO2 is nuts anyway.
Will someone (who knows) please tell me how carbon dioxide can contaminate water, and thus make it impotable?
At present, I am of the opinion that this is yet more BS put before we ‘sceptics’ in order to attempt the impossible, i.e. to dissuade us from thinking logically and reasonably.
Let me begin by saying that I think pumping CO2 gass or liquid into the ground to sequester it is nuts. However, keep in mind that CO2 is already pumped into the ground all the time to enhance extraction of oil from old fields so we are not talking about doing something that isn’t already being done. Have they had any problems with these groundwater around these fields? Finally, CO2 sequesters very readily. For a graphic example stand on the edge of the grand canyon and look at the vertical rock wall faces. Most of these are limestone and it is sedimentarly rock precipited from the oceans hundreds of millions of years old. The oceans quite naturally sequester vast amounts of CO2 already. Find a way to speed up the process just a little, and you might keep up with human combustion of fossile fuel.
CO2 is plant food. They can transport the captured CO2 and bury in deserts. It might help plants and trees to grow there. But then they will emit more CO2 with huge transportation of such gas of life into the nowhere land. Lesson: one idiocy leads to another idiocy, and more idiocy.
George E. Smith says:
November 11, 2010 at 3:02 pm
> Don’t these idiots understand that CO2 sequestration is O2 sequestration. Eventually, we will run out of oxygen to breathe, if they sequester carbon dioxide.
I have no idea of the energy requirements behind it, but I sometimes suggest it be combined with sand, i.e. CO2 + SiO2 = SiC + 2O2, i.e. ceramic and oxygen.
> Perhaps they should reduce the CO2 to carbon, and store that down in the salt mines; we will need it to blacken the ice when the big freeze gets underway.
This one I have a much better idea about energy requirements (as do you, I’m sure). Instead of sequestering the carbon, just use it as feedstock and burn it – wouldn’t that give you a perpetual motion machine?
Hmm, I forget if perpetual motion machines are banned items of discussion. If not, they should be!
Geoffrey Boulton, climategate investigator/whitewasher extraordinaire, and UK government chief climate change advisor, pontificating about Coca Cola’s CO2 technology: http://www.coca-colahellenic.com/sustainability/flagshipprogrammes/Reductionofcarbonemi/
I also have another whinge, which may, or may not pass our astute moderators.
I sent an email to a colleague, and realised that in my (I thought) persuasive way, he would maybe, see our point of view.
I have to admit that this has little or nothing to do with carbonated water, but I make no apologies for introducing a comment that, perhaps is an attempt at generalisation; even appeasement.
“Interesting that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change authors chose the word ‘anthropogenic’ instead of ‘man-made’, which latter term is what they want us to believe, but then they also want to use a five syllable word when two will make more sense, simply to bamboozle the hoi-polloi. Anthropogeny means the study of the origin of man, which has little to do with ‘man-made’. However, my appetite whetted for further misnomers, I found a blog called Watts Up With That, by Anthony of the same steam orientated surname who lives in California, and is, I believe an astro-physicist (think I’ve mentioned him before). He and his guest posters, along with a veritable army of commenters (me included!!) have pretty well squashed any argument from the ‘warmers’, by the simple expediency of producing scientific, peer reviewed and empirical evidence to discount very nearly every knee-jerk reaction, hockey stick illusion, plain ignorance and final abusive name-calling generated by the likes of Al Gore, Michael Mann and Ben Santer, et al.
The railway engineer from India, the supposed head of the IPCC, is oblivious to all these ramifications, just as long as he holds on to his very well paid position. I have read some of the ‘green’ blogs, and have found that most will not deign to read our side; the ‘sceptics’, or ‘denialists’ as Gore, et al, would have it, let alone provide any scientific basis for their credo. If they do, it simply results in verbal abuse.
So there you have the ‘issue’: on the one side we have the greens (they do not deserve a capital ‘G’ because of their despicable behaviour on, and off-line), who are hell-bent on destroying our planet, even to the extent of wiping out most of our existing population (Google ‘green agenda’, and see what you come up with). On the other side, we have ordinary people (I like to think) who may have a passing interest in e.g. Watts Up With That, its ilk, or simply an enquiring mind, one that does not take kindly to any form of propaganda. And there we have another horrifying fact. Most schools in the western world, north, south and west (not too many takers in the east) have been sent a copy of the Gore’s film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. This has now been legally judged in the UK as fraudulent; in any event, nine of the 35 points under investigation were found to be without any scientific foundation. The judge ordered that his findings were to be sent to each and every school that had been sent the Gore film. Has this actually happened, or are seven-year olds still telling their parents, and grand-parents where they are all going wrong? Has there been any form of rebuttal, as the US folk may call it? No. However, the green’s tank is I am glad to say, running dry, but they are not finished yet.”
As some of you may have gathered, I work on a supply ship (big oil!). I cannot abide fools, and I abhor liars. The former are not condusive to the quiet process of good maintenance, and the latter are of no use to anyone.
Once again, CO2 is not a ‘contaminant’ or a ‘pollutant’ in air or water. But, Juraj V. is right to say that there is the possibility that physical changes in groundwater (i.e. pH reduction) could be caused by the introduction of dissolved CO2. These changes could result directly or indirectly in changes in the solubility of some potential inorganic or organic pollutants. However, most groundwater extracted for beneficial use comes from alluvial aquifers that are ‘contaminated’ with plenty of dissolved Ca+2 ions. As long as these Ca+2 ions are present, wouldn’t the pH be buffered by the precipitaion of carbonate when the CO2 is introduced? Maybe these guys have stumbled on an insitu treatment for the hard (high TDS) groundwaters that have plagued groundwater users for so long?
Now I’m going to go have some barley juice contaminated with dissolved CO2!