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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| Carbon Capture Could Cause Quakes |
| 2012-06-21 |
| Capturing carbon dioxide from smokestack emissions and pumping it deep underground may not be as useful a tool for dealing with rising greenhouse-gas levels as advocates suggest, according to a new analysis. You mean they finally tumbled to the fact it's an expensive waste of time? And money? The reason: Rising pressure from the enormous amounts of CO2, which would have to be stored Which I think everybody would agree is a waste of money... Champ could always talk about job saved in carbon sequestration... Moreover, while some underground formations are well-suited for sequestration, they could represent far less storage capacity globally than required if the approach is to be a significant tool for holding down atmospheric concentrations, according to a geophysicist at Stanford University, and the lead author of the analysis, which appears in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. If the goal is to sequester 1 billion tons a year of CO2 globally by 2050, and utilities were to aim only at the most-suitable formations, some 3,500 such sites would have to be uncovered and at spots convenient enough to be economical, Zoback and Stanford colleague Steven Gorelick found in their analysis. Some 85 sites a year would have to come on line between now and 2050 to meet that goal. Yet by some estimates, 3.5 billion tons a year would need to be sequestered to reach emissions goals countries have been discussing internationally to curb global warming. It might be possible to find large-scale formations that could serve an entire region, the researchers say. One such formation lies beneath the southern border of Indiana and Illinois. But the formation borders on a fault zone known for quakes that have reached magnitude 7. Maybe they're thinking of the New Madrid Fault which rang bells in Boston and changed the course of the Mississippi River. If 100 million tons of CO2 were injected into the formation each year through 2050, the sequestered carbon would place a large amount of pressure on the fault zone. The 100 million ton figure is a small fraction of the amount power plants in the region emit today, the researchers estimate. span style=background-color:yellow;>More studies are needed. Hey! That means more grant money is needed, come to think of it! |
| Posted by:Bobby |
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| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2012-06-21 22:55 |
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