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Technology Science

Long-Term Carbon Storage 50

Posted by timothy from the after-all-what-could-go-wrong dept.
zebadee writes "The UK has given £25 million ($45 million) in funding toward storing CO2 under the North Sea. The article at the BBC has a discussion on how this will be achieved. Basically gases produced at the power station will be pumped into old oil and gas fields for long-term storage. This has the added effect of pressurising the wells, allowing better recovery of the contents."
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Long-Term Carbon Storage More

Long-Term Carbon Storage

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  • Tonic (Score:5, Funny)

    by pyrrhonist ( 701154 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @06:14PM (#12818768)
    The UK has given £25 million ($45 million) in funding toward storing CO2 under the North Sea

    An additional £25 million ($45 million) in funding will go toward adding the obligatory gin.

  • Finally they found some money to put it somewhere.
  • Can't the CO2 just escape through the holes made to extract the fuel?

    On a less serious note, those fossil fuel guys are planning this because they know that years from now we'll need that carbon and they can charge us to have them drill it back up again.

  • On the plus side..... (Score:3, Funny)

    by flawedgeek ( 833708 ) <karldnorman@nospAM.gmail.com> on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @07:05PM (#12819141)
    If we ever need to adjust the Earth's orbit, just stick a big drill down into the pocket, and WHOOOSH, just like that.

  • Only helps a little (Score:4, Interesting)

    by WalksOnDirt ( 704461 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @07:15PM (#12819215)
    Given how the article talks about how expensive carbon sequestration is, nuclear plants seem to be a better option for producing electricity. You're not going to be able to separate out 100% of the carbon dioxide from the waste stream anyway.

    The example of reducing the emissions from steel plants is very interesting. I'm sure there are ways to refine steel that don't release carbon (e.g. electrolysis), but using coke would probably still be much cheaper even with the costs of removing most of the carbon from the flue gases. Getting steel plants to implement this without being wiped out (by carbon emitting overseas competitors) or supported by massive government subsidies sounds very tricky, though.

    I really think the best first step for reducing green house gases is to stop producing more coal fired power plants, and schedule the eventual closing of the current ones. The amount of damage done to the atmosphere by the remaining oil to be extracted is probably manageable, but there is enough coal (and tar sands, oil shale, etc.) to cause much more severe problems.

    • Re:Only helps a little (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Bastian ( 66383 )
      Personally, I think that every energy solution based on using 'cleaner' energy that I've heard of is at best too little too late, and at worst a simple case of whistling in the dark. If the world's energy usage continues to skyrocket the way it is, closing all the coal fired power plants in the world and installing the best scrubbers and catalytic converters and such on every other fossil fuel burning device is only going to put us a decade or two behind the current curve. Heck, I think that the entire id
  • From TFA: ""This is what this funding will allow us to assess in great detail. It's likely the costs are comparable with nuclear power and renewables." "

    Depends on location. From my post "Rural Alaska nuclear power gets legislative backing" [blogspot.com]:

    "Because of Galena's inaccessibility and the necessity to ship diesel fuel by barge, residents pay from 20 cents to $1 per kilowatt hour, while the national average is less than 9 cents. With nuclear power, residents could pay a third of what they now pay to power the

    • I'm a big nuclear enthusiast, but isn't the manufacturer offering to pay for the unit itself, with the residents of the town paying for the upkeep and other long-term costs? Doesn't that skew the price expectations?
      • Excellent questions, none of which I have an answer to. I have been following this since the first announcement, which I believe was also posted here on slashdot.

        Any insights are appreciated.

        KOA

      • Well it has to remain profitable or at the very least break even to make it worth the while of the electrical company. I'm sure a new nuclear facility would cost a great deal of money to erect, and unfortunately I don't have any recent American examples to give costs for since, well, we haven't built a new nuclear reactor in some time. The company is selling you electricity at whatever it may cost them to bring it to you and yes that includes building of facilities, upkeep, line maintenence, etc. Given t
        • You completely missed the point.

          The manufacturer has offered to pay without recompense for the construction and installation of the unit, and then the town picks up the operating costs, essentially getting the plant for free in order for the manufacturer to get real-world experience and feedback, and some marketing. This represents an artificial depression of the price of the reactor and hence the electricity prices, because the town isn't paying for what is clearly a very expensive part of the whole plan

          • This kind of thing skews the numbers associated with the reactor to such a degree as to make the electricity price very misleading.

            Anytime the organization, in this case the power comapany, doesn't bare the full costs of the product prices are skewed. If the company isn't able to pay the costs then the project isn't economically feasible and they want subsidies or other government guaranties of profit. While I may ask for assistance to start a business, I should be able to pay it back and still make

    • "Because of Galena's inaccessibility and the necessity to ship diesel fuel by barge, residents pay from 20 cents to $1 per kilowatt hour, while the national average is less than 9 cents. With nuclear power, residents could pay a third of what they now pay to power their homes, Yoder said.

      I'd be that if the total costs of nuclear power were included it would be more than a third. The government subsidizes and protects the nuclear power industry. If they had to compeat in a true free market economy the

  • Hmm (Score:2)

    by Knara ( 9377 )
    Wasn't this a plotline in some old Seagal movie?

  • A dangerous idea (Score:3, Interesting)

    by B.D.Mills ( 18626 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @08:19PM (#12819670)
    The idea of hiding the CO2 underground makes me uneasy. There's no guarantee that the CO2 is going to stay put. Suppose an earthquake ruptures the chamber. What then? If the CO2 comes out, it will kill anyone in the vicinity through asphyxiation.

    http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/smother.asp [snopes.com]

    Google for "carbon dioxide lake deaths" to learn more on why this is a dangerous idea.

    • Re:A dangerous idea (Score:5, Funny)

      by Curmudgeonlyoldbloke ( 850482 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @09:14PM (#12820055)
      Indeed it is, what with the North Sea been one of the most heavily populated areas of Europe, and one of the most seismically active.
    • uhh.. like the other replier already mentioned..

      nobody lives there, apart from the crew. there's not that much quakes either. and they could have figured out pockets where they can push it to that wouldn't release it all in one go even if shit did hit the fan.

    • Maybe you could create methane from the CO2 (bacterially?) and store it as methane hydrate ice on the sea floor. Worse case you sink a few ships or airplanes. but RADAR might be able to warn against it.
      • First off, bacteria already creates methane. These are bio waste compositers. But you now have something that is usable as a fuel. Rather than store it, it would be better to use it and simply cycle the CO2.
        • Sorry, I'm not getting your point. We know there are bacteria that photosynthesize and bacteria that produce methane, but are there bacteria that produce methane from carbon dioxide? I would surprise me if there weren't but I'm no expert.

          If you just burn the methane you have the CO2 back again, which is what they're trying to avoid. If you sequester it as anything but gaseous CO2 you have something you can use as a fuel, but as the grandparent said large deposits of gaseous CO2 are dangerous.

  • Ironically... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mister_llah ( 891540 )
    Nature came up with its own long term carbon storage system long before we did.

    It's called "diamonds"

  • Idea! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why choose to begin fixing our problems when we can instead sweep them under the rug? Or in this case, the ocean? It's not as if it'll still be there in 20 years when we've run out of storage space!

    Anyway, my point is that the effort here is aimed at the problems caused by inefficient and polluting industrial processes - rather than fixing those processes instead, which would be a much more desirable goal.

    I'm also wondering how much this will figure into any carbon emissions trading schemes that are going
  • sorta ot, but somebody mentioned "nucular" powa. why don't they make nuclear plants underground? can increase efficiency because waste heat can be recylced, would vastly limit contamination risks, all you need for inputs and outputs are a uranium elevator (one for ppl too) and cables for power, and if anything goes wrong just slam a 50 ton lead slab over the intakes and outputs, problem solves itself.

    thinking some of the more stable coal or ore mines could be used for this, but it beats the HELL out of put

  • Don't sequester CO2: grow food in space (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Randym ( 25779 ) on Thursday June 16, 2005 @02:20AM (#12830445)
    The energy required to compress CO2 and then pump it underground leads to the generation of yet more CO2, because the process is not (and can never be) 100% efficient.

    What we *need* is giant balloons (filled with sunwarmed gaseous CO2) carrying food-bearing plants to float in the atmosphere. Using the abundant solar energy, the plants can be kept at the proper temperature to grow; they can be grown hydroponically using sun-melted frozen water (from the same place as the frozen CO2); they are right there in the sunlight; and the frozen CO2 all around them can be melted and fed to them (thus generating oxygen in the process, which, when bled off, can, at those altitudes, be zapped by cosmic rays and create more protective ozone.)

    When the food-bearing plants are mature, segments can be split off and ferried directly by remote control back down to places on earth where famine is epidemic, thus bypassing corrupt governments. The fuel would be methane generated by using sunlight and water to compost non-food stalks and roots.

    Seriously. Except for the obvious lack of political will to do this, it is only an engineering problem. At one stroke it will solve the excess-CO2 problem AND the lack-of-ozone problem AND food shortages anywhere on the globe.

    Come on, slashdotters: find something technically wrong with this proposal. Can you?

    • CO2's heavier than air. Can you actually do hot-air ballooning with just the warmth generated by the Sun? If so, why do balloonists have those immense heat generators on board?
      • CO2's heavier than air. Hmmm. Well, then we'll never have a problem with CO2 as a greenhouse gas because it will never rise above ground level!

        I joke. Actually, you are -- as you know -- correct. Let's substitute, then, another gas: how about methane (CH4)? That's about 1/2 the density of air. Sure, helium or hydrogen would be better, but I wanted something 1) readily available which 2) didn't incur much of an energy cost to create it (as, say, pure hydrogen would). CH4 is good (although admittedly

    • I have been wondering that if we create tents on the farm fields and pump CO2 in, if if would improve the crop yield and speed? One interesting aspect of it, is that we would be able to move the veggies to higher CO2 concentrations and somewhere down the road, perhaps move them to lower pressures. Perfect for Mars.
      • ...if we create tents on the farm fields and pump CO2 in, if it would improve the crop yield and speed?

        This is a well-known phenomenon in *highly controlled* environments like greenhouses, where all possible growth variables are controlled, and insect predation is minimized. See this [google.com]. As a global phenomenon, however, it is likely to lead to higher foliage growth without necessarily an increase in yield. But I guess we'll never know unless we do the experiment. Oh, wait... =8^O

        The 'lower pressures

        • After following the link, the first thing I thought of was what a waste that they burned fuel to increase the CO2 in the greenhouse. I wonder how many greenhouses actually do this.
          One idea that occurs to me, is that a useful tool would be something that can seperate CO2 from the air. But it has to be small and inexpensive. It should be able to be patented, which would allow a small business to create something is needed and helpful to the environment.
          • One idea that occurs to me, is that a useful tool would be something that can seperate CO2 from the air.

            OK, then see this [google.com]. Other people have been thinking along the same lines. Apparently, it is well-known how to do a 'low-grade' scrubbing of the air, using oxide reduction, but the holy grail is a 'high-grade' scrubbing. So far, it appears that it will be both large and expensive. It is clearly worth thinking about.

            Personally, I was thinking first of a nanoscale centrifuge, since, as the other post

  • Convert that nasty carbon to lovely breathable oxygen:

    Carbon (6C12) + alpha (2He4) ==> Oxygen (8O16)

  • trees (Score:2)

    by mattr ( 78516 )
    Trees do a pretty good job of it too. That is why environmentally conscious pr departments of big companies laud burning wood since it just returns to the atmosphere the CO2 that was sequestered by the tree in the first place. The next step is NOT TO BURN THE WOOD! Just let it keep growing.

    Or even cut down the tree and plant another. You can even cut off most of the trunk and branches of some trees and you will get new trees coming out of the stump. Planting trees is one of the few ways I know that ou
    • Here's some more ideas along the same lines.

      Plant grass, havest it and pack it deep into closed limestone mines. (grass grows faster than trees can can be havested and transported more easily).

      -or-

      Burn the trees and bury the ashes (ashes == concentrated carbon)

      Either was, trying to seperate out the CO2 from the rest of the atmosphere and then phase change it to a solid so that it can be buried is just a stupid waste of money when there are cheap ways to accomplish the same goal.
  • And here I thought this was going to be about how to haul smugglers off to Jabba's palace...

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