Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
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.
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.
