Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
How can we put all the C02 problems to rest? Give them a proper burial. Australia intends to send 110,231 tons of C02 to a grave 6,500 feet under.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
The idea of sending greenhouse gases to be hidden away where the sun doesn’t shine isn’t exactly a new one. Man has always looked for ways to bury that which is stinky, dangerous, and in some cases illegal. Since man first said, “that stinks, I hope I don’t step in that later” man has been covering up, in the ground or dumping off in the sea, every manner of refuse. Why not the CO2 emissions?
Since 1996 more than a million tons of carbon dioxide have been buried in 9 different locations. Some have have gone to rest under an oil field in the North Sea and under a gas field in Algeria. The latest CO2 grave is in the state of Victoria, Australia.
Geosequestration is one of those 75 cent words, constructed to dazzle. What is geosequestration? It’s carbon capture and storage, referred to as CCS. CO2 resulting from some form of production or another, it doesn’t matter what form, is captured and injected somewhere…where the injector hopes the injected never escapes the injectee, something like what happened to Jimmy Hoffa.
Unlike what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, what gets injected into the ground under pressure may not stay in the ground.
In 1989 there was an earthquake in Australia that killed 13 people and created billions of dollars of damage. At the center of this particular earthquake was a major fault resting comfortably below Australia’s Newcastle coalfields.
Many scientists believe “geomechanical pollution” was the culprit behind this earthquake. Millions of tons of coal and millions and millions more tons of water had been removed from the Newcastle coalfield since it had opened in 1801.
There is much speculation that the removal of 200 years worth of soil, coal and water from this field changed the stress on the earth above and below the coalfield.
Geosequestration or sequestering greenhouse gases underground could have a distabilizing effect on the earth as well. But, the first rule of thumb would certainly have to be to pump those gases and store them as far away from a fault as possible so they wouldn’t be released en masse during an earthquake, and to store them as far away from populated areas as would be possible.
No one can agree whether or not manmade changes to the underground landscape have anything to do with causing instability. Common sense would dictate scooping out the inside of anything would change its stability. On the other side of the coin, pumping anything full of a foreign substance is going to cause instability as well. Just see what happens when too much gas is pumped into a balloon, or too much custard is pumped into a doughnut.
Labels: Australia, CO2, Geosequestration, greenhouse gas
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
How can we put all the C02 problems to rest? Give them a proper burial. Australia intends to send 110,231 tons of C02 to a grave 6,500 feet under.
