It was a tenth of that, 100,000 tons, that caused the Lake Nyos disaster
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
7000 ft below the city of Decatur, Illinois, population 74,710 people, is a high pressure reservoir which contains 1 million tons of CO2.
From the press release:
One of the largest carbon sequestration projects in the U.S., the Illinois Basin – Decatur Project (IBDP) has reached its goal of capturing 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and injecting it deep underground in the Mount Simon Sandstone formation beneath Decatur, Illinois. The project is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of carbon capture and storage. IBDP director Robert Finley talked about the million-ton milestone with News Bureau physical sciences editor Liz Ahlberg. Finley is director of the Advanced Energy Technology Institute at the Illinois State Geological Survey, part of the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois.
The reservoir has been created to demonstrate the viability of carbon sequestration – capturing large quantities on carbon, to prevent the CO2 from being emitted into the atmosphere.
The University of Illinois scientists responsible for this demonstration project assure us that the reservoir does not pose a safety threat. According to a University of Illinois press release;
“Extensive monitoring takes place during and after injection to be sure the stored CO2 stays in place. Monitoring techniques include using geophysical technology to confirm the position of the CO2 underground and wells to monitor groundwater and soils.
No out-of-bounds health, safety or environmental risks were observed from this properly designed and managed storage site. Appropriate risk mitigation and management plans were an integral part of the overall project planning. Extensive monitoring took place before, during and now after the injection to be sure the CO2 stays in place. The first line of monitoring begins deep below the ground, so we know if any leakage occurs long before any CO2 might reach the surface.”
They’re probably right – when you create a demonstration project, a showpiece for what you hope will become a lucrative business, you want to make sure nothing goes wrong. I’m sure that elaborate precautions have been taken to prevent any possibility of adverse news, in the hope that this reservoir will be the first of many.
However, as the scientists responsible for the project admit, a serious carbon sequestration effort will need to store a lot more than a million tons of CO2. “… One million tons is scalable in its behavior to the 3 million tons that would be emitted annually from a typical medium-sized, coal-fired power plant. …”
If just one of those proposed sequestration projects suffers a major containment breach, say if an earthquake cracks the geological structure, or if a mistake or greed leads to the reservoir being overloaded, the result could be a disaster.
In Africa, in 1986, an abrupt release of an estimated 100,000 – 300,000 tons of CO2 killed 2,500 people up to 25km (15.5 miles) from the source of the release.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos#1986_disaster
A similar release near a major city would kill a sizeable fraction of the city’s population. The region of devestation was comparable to the loss of life which would be caused by a large nuclear explosion – the only reason a lot more people didn’t die, was Lake Nyos is a sparsely inhabited rural region.
The Lake Nyos CO2 release was so deadly, because CO2 is heavier than air – when the huge CO2 cloud boiled out of lake Nyos, it hugged the ground, displacing all breathable air to an elevation 10s of ft above ground level, suffocating almost everyone in its path.
Its not just people and animals which would be affected – car engines would also stall, as the blanket of CO2 choked off the supply of oxygen.
If carbon sequestration becomes commonplace, sooner or later someone will get greedy and careless, and will be careless in their choice of geological reservoir, and / or will overload their geological reservoir to boost their bottom line. And that carelessness will, in my opinion, almost inevitably lead to a catastrophic loss of life.
Sequestering carbon dioxide is inane. We deserve whatever happens as a result because we were stupid enough to let it be attempted. Good example of why we shouldn’t stand idle while they are building strength for other stupid “prevention” ideas.
So the people that have given us wind farms (deadly nightmares for wildlife, massive fire risks when they regularly fail catastrophically, navigation risks in water installations and a continuing danger when decommissioned unless they are disassembled and removed) and the ones who’ve given us the mirror array solar heat generation systems (an even deadlier nightmare for wildlife and a continuing danger to air traffic) tell us that they would like government to force adoption of another unproven technology which could (and will at some point) kill 10’s or 100’s of thousands of people, livestock and wildlife. All this in order to keep plants from having something to breathe.
What could possibly go wrong.
<i…A similar release near a major city would kill a sizeable fraction of the city’s population. …
100%, should think…
Those above the 10th(?) floor should come out ok. A CO2 flood tends to hug the ground.
Depends on where the air handler intakes are located.
I live in Decatur and there is only one building that [tall], only 12 stories. Well this sucks!
if we bury it under a couple hundred feet of shredded hundred dollar bills, we could stave off disaster. the science is settled.
Why does the Titanic immediately come to mind.
Hubris at work:
Hubris when saying that all warming is anthropogenic, while probably only a small fraction may be attributed to CO2 emissions.
Hubris when pretending that the bad climate change will be corrected with good man-made geo-engineering, whatever the risks.
These are bad solutions to a non-problem.
Useless, costly, ineffective, and contra-productive: plainly wrong!
http://www.jeremiahproject.com/newworldorder/globalwarming.html
Even if the CO2 keeps underground, carbon sequestration is a crime against nature. Plants in deserts are craving for more CO2 to save water with less opened stomata…
CO2 is the Gas of Life! It is not the villain, it’s the hero !!! When will they ever understand?
If CO2 is heavier than air and hugs the ground when released in large amounts, why does it behave differently when released in smaller amounts from coal plants, car exhausts, or when exhaled? How does it get “well mixed” in the atmosphere when it is released close to the ground?
Eventually it would mix BUT in the meantime a lot of people can die.
Power plants have tall chimneys to ensure that the dispersion happens at high levels and gas monitors around the flue gas vent systems.
The CO2 is being injected into Mt. Simon formation sandstone where it will eventually mineralize (turn into solid). It is also supercritical at 10,000 feet deep with hundreds of feet of caprock on top and has been extensively surveyed and analyzed. Lake Nyos occurred when the volcano that created the crater in the first place vented CO2 into the bottom of the lake. Then the lake inverted, releasing the now cool and depressurized CO2 all at once. The two situations are not comparable.
I am saying this for the purposes of accuracy, I am not a proponent of having to use this technology to mitigate climate change.
I am not advocating for or against CCS, but I do have to say that the risk is minimal. CCS is essentially what Enhanced Oil Recovery is. EOR uses CO2 injection to stimulate recovery of oil that otherwise is not recovered from a formation. CO2 displaces crude and is stored in the reservoir.
CCS in geologic formations can be viable and store CO2 for long periods of time. Ideally, CO2 is injected into brine formations where it chemically bonds with rock to form carbonates.
The DOE at the National Energy Technology Laboratory had worked extensively in this area. See http://www.netl.doe.gov/research/coal/carbon-storage/carbon-storage-infrastructure
and other such references.
Several commercial projects including a proposed coal to liquids plant were to provide CO2 from coal gasification to companies that would use the CO2 for EOR and get paid for the CO2. Thus this form of CCS was actually profitable. It worked out that the CO2 from processing 1 ton of coal would produce an additional 2 tons of crude. Therefore the CTL plant would boost fuel production in two viable ways.
I do not think CCS should be used to just store CO2 as that is a waste of the resource and a huge expense. But CO2 should be captured and used as a resource in oil recovery as it is in short supply at that cost and volume needed. There are only a few natural reservoirs of CO2 that can be tapped for EOR and CO2 pipelines need to run for up to a thousand miles to get the CO2 to the wellhead in some cases. Thus building a CTL plant next to an oil field amenable to CO2 EOR makes sense .
The volumes of gas involved in EOR are much lower, The DoE estimates around 48 million tons a year of CO2 are used for EOR. A single coal fired power planet would produce around 300 million tons per annum. In the US alone there are over 500 such plants and the Chinese and Indians alone are planning to build 750 new plants. Do the arithmetic – thats a hell of a lot of CO2 injection.
Keith, you are absolutely correct! CO2 emitted from coal, natural gas and oil power generation along with CO2 from natural gas processing (cleanup), refineries, manufacturing would quickly swamp the needs of the EOR industry. That is why geologic sequestration is being evaluated.
What is amazing is that CO2 is pumped OUT of the ground where I live in order to be injected back INTO the ground to make old oil wells more productive. The mind boggles!!
I hope that no-one from Decatur is reading these comments.
So – the ecoloons are against fracking as it introduces “harmful” chemicals under pressure that might cause earthquakes and “unknown issues” while fracking the ground but they have no issue introducing a harmful substance (in concentration) under pressure? Sounds entirely consistent to me. Not bloodly likely.
Clicked on Elmer’s first link and am now puzzled…
Why would water seeping into ground fissures and freezing and expanding quickly cause explosions? That makes no sense! Only the water close to the surface and in contact with the suddenly dropping air temps would freeze that rapidly. And if the ground or rock was so solid as to not “give” on either side for the expansion of the water as it froze, wouldn’t it just rise back up through the fissure it entered in the first place?
Darn, I am finally forced to admit that CO2 is dangerous.
But only when you put 1 million tons of the stuff in the hands of these pinheads.
This is just madness.
… Thus reducing the surplus population, the ultimate goal of Gaia-worship. Frankly, I don’t see a problem here.
Thanks, Eric.
I think CO2 fear can drive some people insane, others, just greedy.
ADM Receives $99.2 Million U.S. Department Of Energy Grant For Second Carbon Sequestration Project 6/11/2010
That’s how it works.
Where are the environmentalist. Wouldn’t this cause earthquakes, destroy ground water, and have negative effects on the environment that can’t even be predicted? Where are the movie makers and actor activists oposed to this effort to meddle with our environment?
What is the pressure in the reservoir?
What kind of geological structure is containing it?
of all the idiocies of the warmistas , CO2 sequestration is the bang-your-head stupidest .
Living in the Front Range , it is not possible to drive from Colorado Springs to Denver without passing at least one mile long coal change bringing power from Wyoming . Each atom of carbon of the entire volume of this endless flow of trains will be combined with 2 of oxygen . A quick google finds a 130 car train carries about 15,000 tons . Even lopping off 3,000 tons for ash he amount of carbon , each train will become 44,000 tons of CO2 .
So their deimo demonstrates they can sequester about 23 trains worth , perhaps a couple of days worth , of an endless stream .
Just plain stupid .
If co2 were to drop to 200 to 300 ppm humans would quit breathing and if co2 were to go below 180 ppm plant life would die. Some one to introduce a measure in the senate to find out if the warmists were willing to go that far.
I think Bernie did that yesterday! playing the fool again
Let’s apply a bit of science. The CO2 is pressurised, but pressurisation is by 3,000 + ft water and rock which makes the STABLE underground pressure exceed 105 Bar, needed to convert CO2 to the liquid phase.
It’s perfectly safe unless you were to take away the rock and embedded water that keeps the CO2 liquid. You might argue that the CO2 could dissolve in the water and rise to the top; calculate how long that would need! Has the World forgotten basic Physics?
CO2 will not liquefy in the subsurface. It will dissolve in the reservoir fluid, react with minerals, or create a CO2 gas cap.
It will initially displace water because its density is 1.18 g/cm^3. However, the density of 100 Bar CO saturated water has been reported to be higher, so you may be right.
It’s still safe though!
Think it is worth mentioning the disaster at Lake Nyos was predicated on topology much as the CO2.
Lake Nyos is a crater lake, all the CO2 outgassed in the disaster had nowhere to go but downhill – where all the people live, as they usually do, at the base of a volcanic flank.
The sequestration formation close to Decatur would behave nothing like Lake Nyos if there was a sudden release of CO2.
From Wankerpedia: “Lake Kivu is a fresh water lake and, along with Cameroonian Lake Nyos and Lake Monoun, is one of three that experience limnic eruptions. Around the lake, geologists found evidence of massive biological extinctions about every thousand years, caused by outgassing events. . . volcanic activity is suspected.
“The gaseous chemical composition of exploding lakes is unique to each lake; in Lake Kivu’s case, methane and carbon dioxide due to lake water interaction with a volcano. . . [CH4 data]. . .There is also an estimated 256 cubic kilometers of carbon dioxide. . . The risk from a possible Lake Kivu overturn is catastrophic, dwarfing other documented lake overturns at Lakes Nyos and Monoun, because of the approximately two million people living in the lake basin.”