Fracked Shale Could Sequester Carbon Dioxide 235
MTorrice writes "The same wells that energy companies drill to extract natural gas from shale formations could become repositories to store large quantities of carbon dioxide. A new computer model suggests that wells in the Marcellus shale, a 600-sq-mile formation in the northeastern U.S. that is a hotbed for gas extraction, could store half the CO2 emitted by the country's power plants from now until 2030."
Re:interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
plus how much energy (that comes mostly from fossil fuels?) will it take to pump the carbon dioxide back into the shale? and how much energy did it take to get the natural gas out in the first place? and how much carbon dioxide did that produce?
Re:interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember reading that a majority of the energy used in the USA is for concrete production. Switching to locally sourced geopolymers will reduce the amount of power we need and drop us from the top per-capita energy consumer to one of the most "green" nations in the world.
It is definitely better than messing around with mercury-filled bulbs and pumping CO2 into the ground.
So the way environmentalists will go with this is to say no.
Re:interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
As a few others already pointed out, there is to be no clamor. The problem of pump and dump does not change because of this, and the potential for more extreme problems grow.
Let me give an example to clarify. Landfills were seen as a great savior. Bury the trash, especially in colder climates and build ski resorts on top of the fills. Michigan did this. The first year was cool, a new village sprouted up around the fill and ski fans flocked in. Then the seepage contaminated the water supply of not just the small village, but water supplies for hundreds of thousands of suburbanites and it all closed down. Nobody wanted to ski in turd smelling snow, let alone live near it or drink the water from the areas around it.
The better solution would have been to extend and grow recycling operations, limit massive dumping by large companies to paid officials to look the other way, and help society be more aware of their impact. You know, kind of like we started to do in the early 70s and forgot about due to massive add campaigns and cheap toys.
What will pumping CO2 into the ground get us? Temporary reprieve from increasing CO2 levels (with thinning green areas to process that back in to Oxygen)? What happens if the well leaks? Massive deaths from O2 starvation?
Now if they could remove the O2 and put that back in the air and dump the remaining Carbon down the tubes, well in a few million years we'd have lots of diamonds. They won't or can't, so there is no use in investing lots of time and effort into this type of project.
Society needs to stop accepting bandaid fixes to problems that people are creating in order to make massive profits from society. The people making profits should be re-investing that into making society at least remain stable instead of constantly shitting in the wells.
Re:Sounds like a great plan. (Score:4, Interesting)
Rock hasn't been known for its impenetrability to water, otherwise basements wouldn't need sump pumps.
Of course, CO2 + water = carbonic acid, which has a tendency to dissolve rock. We will likely see those chambers leak sooner or later.
Re:Sounds like a great plan. (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of people forget that material properties change with pressure and depth. The first time the Alvin submersible found black smokers (active volcanic vents) on the mid-oceanic ridge, they moved in for a closer look. They found out afterwards that they'd recorded temperatures close to 400 C. The melting point of Alvin's portholes was far less than 400 C [whoi.edu], and they would've died if they'd stayed there too long. People see liquid water, and just assume the temperature is below 100 C and therefore the glass portholes are safe. But at the depth they were at, the pressure is much higher and thus the boiling point of water was around 400 C.
I did some quick research. Fracking is typically done 2-3 km underground. The ground temperature at that depth [mpoweruk.com] is about 75 C. The pressure at that depth [spec2000.net] is about 200-300 bar (atmospheres).
Looking at the phase diagram for CO2 [wikipedia.org], that's in the supercritical fluid phase. So the CO2 wouldn't need to be pressurized at that depth like it has to be at sea level. The ground pressure alone would be enough to prevent it from reverting to a gas, and thus it would be impossible for the chamber to catastrophically spring a leak. The only way that could happen is if another drilling operation tapped the chamber and suffered a blowout. Normally that doesn't happen - they keep the bore filled with heavy mud to maintain the pressure at depth. But occasionally (e.g. Deepwater Horizon) there is a blowout, the pressurized mud is lost, and the liquid/gas underneath is then squeezed out by the surrounding rock through the "straw" (bore). I don't see this as being any more risky than regular oil drilling. If anything it's safer since CO2 is pretty inert and won't catch fire. The biggest risk would be the CO2 gas pooling in a depression and suffocating anyone/anything inside.
Carbon sequestration, the myth that won't die (Score:5, Interesting)
The *cost* of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is way, way too high to do this. Even with cool tech, you've got to build the power plant right next to the sequestration site -- which means getting the fuel to the site -- which means building right of way, pipelines or rail, etc. Transmission lines too. Then you take the performance hit in the generation to run the sequestration equipment.
It's cheaper to build big wind in the breadbasket, lesser wind offshore, solar on roofs and in the southwest, bits of biomass and geothermal where it works, and use transmission to move it around. What about no sun or wind? Well, it's windy or sunny someplace nearly all the time in tUSA, but yes we'd have to use our ~21GW of pumped hydro storage differently, maybe build more, maybe use electric vehicles (EVs) for storage, maybe upgrade our infrastructure to change when we demand electricity [run electric hot water heater, air source heat pumps extra when flush with renewable generation so that we use them less when we'd be short]. All of that is way cheaper than CCS, and as a bonus it won't leak the carbon later, it doesn't require creating mini earthquakes, chopping off the tops of mines, figuring out what to do with the ash, the SOx, the NOx, the Hg, and other pollutants, the nuclear waste, how to deal with water shortage or water temperature problems, and on and on and on.
Look, I've been on slashdot 15 years or so. I know the community believes in nuclear power. The answer to CCS is the same as nuclear: it's too expensive. You can argue breeder or reprocessing or any number of other things, but the age of cheap gas has killed any nuclear renaissance, and the age of plentiful cheap wind in the breadbasket, plentiful expensive wind on the coasts [where electricity is expensive anyway], and plummeting PV costs means that nuclear and coal are dead for economic reasons, it's just a matter of time.
(footnotes) I didn't bother to provide links, but you might check out "2012 Wind Technologies Market Report," the economics behind the closures of Vermont Yankee and Kewaunee, "Analysis of Drought Impacts on Electricity Production in the Western and Texas Interconnections of the United States," the recent output reductions at Pilgrim and Millstone nuclear plants due to the Cape Cod Bay and Long Island Sound water too hot for cooling, how Xcel Colorado electric utility is procuring 450 of MWs of wind and 170 MW of solar because it's cheaper than gas, coal, or nuclear, and on and on and on. We built loads of coal in the 50s and 60s, nuclear in the 70s and 80s, combined cycle natural gas units in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and now those will operate until retire, while being replaced with wind, solar, some new gas, and energy efficiency. Know why? It's the cheapest way to do things. CCS (and nuclear) aren't, not by a long shot. There's no reason to think that they will be, either.
Re:interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
how would the water used in fracking get up to pollute?
It doesn't go up. It goes down. The water pollution is caused by gunk leaking from waste water surface ponds. Solution: better seals on surface ponds, more inspections of the ponds, and bigger fines for violations.