Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Turning CO2 Into Liquid Gold or Corn Into Moonshine; one man’s trash is another one’s treasure.
Friday, May 9, 2008
If the treatment is more deadly than the cure, then find another cure. That’s the Canadian motto.
Canadians are working on a project that would store, underground, a billion tonnes of CO2. The Redwater reef could soak up all greenhouse gas emissions for 20 years if their plan can be implemented. What’s the plan?
$50 billion and 7 oilsands bitumen upgrader projects in Alberta Industrial Heartland district. $500 million to be spent on capturing carbon-dioxide emissions from nearby could be turned into liquefied C02 and pumped into Redwater wells to revive the old oil field. 130 million to 180 million barrels of light premium oil could be pumped out at a rate of 10,000 to 15,000 barrels a day.
The U.S. has taken the position that it won’t buy fuel from Alberta’s tar sands, on the grounds that, it is too environmentally tainted. That’s the pot calling the kettle black, but a good decision none the less.
The U.S. can’t sign contracts to buy gasoline and other fuels whose production releases more global warming pollution than conventional petroleum.
Neil Shelly, executive director of Alberta Industrial Heartland Association says, this project could make Edmonton area’s oilsands upgrader ally one of the very few heavy industrial areas in the world able to comply with emerging controls of greenhouse gas emissions.
It seems to me carbon capture is a modern-day C02 distillery; of a sort. Capturing something that would normally rise up, mix with the air and become lost is the same principle Bootleggers use to make moonshine.
Some industrial operations put off C02 gases that simply rise up and mix with the air and become lost, or at least out of our control; of course they aren’t really lost.
Carbon capture will trap those gases transform them into something magical, or so it would seem. The CO2 will get pumped into the ground for a time yet to be determined and with an outcome yet to be determined.
Bootlegging Moonshine has been going on in nearly every country on the globe, in nearly every generation. Man usually finds a way to alter his perceptions, hide what he doesn’t want to face and often times bury the problems he creates; hoping they simply disappear, or at least stay buried until he is long.
At Redwater reef, the intent is to send the CO2 about 1,000 metres under a hard rock cap where it will be stored. How long, how well, and how safely is yet to be determined.
Carbon capture and sequestration, like Moonshine, could be hazardous to your health.
As as luck would have it, carbon credits are becoming a valuable commodity. Now, with worth to them, everyone will be trying to capture, trade and cash in on greenhouse gases.
Photo Thanks: A Wilkes County copper moonshine still
Courtesy of Applachian Cultural Museum
Applachian State University
Boone, North Carolina
Illustration Thanks: co2capture project
Labels: Alberta, CCS, Canada, Carbon, Carbon-credit, Geosequestration, Oil Sands, Oil shale, Oil tar, carbon dioxide, carbon-trading market
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Turning CO2 Into Liquid Gold or Corn Into Moonshine; one man’s trash is another one’s treasure.
