Scientists In Iceland Turn CO2 Into Stone (theguardian.com) 126
New submitter Zmobie quotes a report from The Guardian: [Carbon dioxide has been pumped underground and turned rapidly into stone, demonstrating a radical new way to tackle climate change.] The unique project promises a cheaper and more secure way of burying CO2 from fossil fuel burning underground, where it cannot warm the planet. Such carbon capture and storage (CCS) is thought to be essential to halting global warming, but existing projects store the CO2 as a gas and concerns about costs and potential leakage have halted some plans. The new research pumped CO2 into the volcanic rock under Iceland and sped up a natural process where the basalts react with the gas to form carbonate minerals, which make up limestone. The researchers were amazed by how fast all the gas turned into a solid -- just two years, compared to the hundreds or thousands of years that had been predicted. One of the downsides for the project is that it requires 25 tons of water for each ton of CO2 buried. However, seawater can be used. The Iceland Project (also referred to as the CarbFix Project) is already being upscaled to bury 10,000 tons of CO2 each year, in addition to the hydrogen sulphide which also turns into minerals.
Again? (Score:1)
Wow. They did it just yesterday too.
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Re: Again? (Score:2, Funny)
They showed it a picture of Hillary.
Re: Again? (Score:2)
I'm confused... do you generally evaluate most senior citizens on their fuckability?
Iceland - of all places! (Score:1)
No, wait, I think I got that backwards! They are trying to prevent becoming Texas!
Seawater or any salt water? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Not only would we be sequestering carbon, but we would also be sequestering the extra water we seem to be getting right now.
Re: Seawater or any salt water? (Score:2)
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Any water, salt or no.
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This is actually a VERY good question.
If you could dump all kinds of waste water (eg oilsands ponds, fracking water, non-toxic mining waste) along with carbon into the volcano, does it produce a usable material, or is the material produced just another kind of toxic sludge?
Iceland isn't the only place this can be done, anywhere along the pacific coast would be viable since those are all volcanic areas.
What would be very cool is if it creates a kind of limestone that could be then re-mined and used for cemen
Re: Seawater or any salt water? (Score:2)
Iceland isn't very geyser-y. We only have one active geyser basin, and it's pretty far from hellisheiÃi.
But yes Iceland's basalts are MORB, not exactly the same as other places. But then again, not all of our layers are the same. Some aren't even basalt (rhyolite, andesite), and some aren't even lava flows.
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But then again, not all of our layers are the same.
Gosh, first moment I was reading lawyers and was really wondering where you sentence would lead us.
BTW: are you playing Eve Online?
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No, I'm not much of a gamer. I do deal in ISK, though ;)
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>Iceland isn't the only place this can be done, anywhere along the pacific coast would be viable since those are all volcanic areas.
No. TFS stated that it need mafic rock(basalt) to sequester CO2. Mafic lava occurs in hotspot volcano and mid ocean ridge.
Common volcano spew felsic lava. They are acidic and won't work for this purpose.
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Yur know goud two.
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Oil and gas are pumped from sedimentary rock. Basalt is hard dense igneous rock. You don't squeeze oil from volcanic soil. The "fossil" part of fossil fuels is somewhat literal.
How much energy does it take to drill enough 800m drill holes through basalt to sequester a meaningful amount of CO2? How many drill holes would be needed?
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How many drill holes would be needed?
Until it is full...
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How much energy does the entire process take? This is only cost effective if the total cost of the solution is small compared to the value of the oil/coal burned in the first place.
I guess they could argue not if they use renewable energy.
Then again if that one was exported or used up rather than fossil energy that would had been one (better?) solution.
For a country (rather system since this could be a global matter) which mostly / only use fossil fuel then that's an interesting question of course.
Re: Seawater or any salt water? (Score:2)
Maybe hard from a Mohs/vickers perspective, but in practice it's usually highly fractured and easy to erode. This is most visible in the dikes that, being harder, get left behind.
Re: Seawater or any salt water? (Score:2)
Oh, and concerning fossil fuels, we have coal onshore and oil offshore
Too late. (Score:2)
Back to the Good Dupe Days! (Score:1)
Ever since our newest Slashdot Overlords (Whipslash et al.) took over, things have been improving. With today's dupe, however, this is the day it really, really feels like home.
On topic: This is a story I'm OK with reading twice, because even though it's in the early stages, it shows promise for our ability to use science and technology to overcome the damage our tech-fueled overconsumption has caused during the past two centuries. (And I'm using "tech" here in a broad sense of the term to cover many tec
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It's not as simple as you portray. If it was, we would have already switched to all renewables but that isn't happening.
But I guess my biggest question is why would investors be needing to make a decision at all? If this is a sound process, why wouldn't government be doing it with a small tax across the economy and byproducts paying for it? Government would also have the abilities to isolate itself from any liability if 40 years from now it turns out to be a mess. But they also have the abilities to negotia
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The majority of divestment from fossil fuel stock is a political statement not a financial decision. At least the stuff I know about are outside of the higher sulfur coal from the Appalachian regions. And that is caused more from political manipulation than anything.
Oil is not the boom it used to be but that is thanks to fracking and shale (think scietific advancements) and the increasing supply of natural gas. But the boom was largely political manipulation in the first place with opec limiting production
Oh don't go all stereotypical (Score:2)
You seem to assume (s)he is a citizen of the USA. woi, oh woi?
Ancient process (sort of) (Score:3)
This process is not completely new. A process related (or actually this one) was used by the ancient romans to produce a type of concrete that severely outlasts current commercially available concrete. That recipe was thought lost, but recently someone managed to replicate it. It used see water, high quantities of carbon and volcanic rock/ash. It is good that new uses have been found for the process or to similar processes.
Re:Ancient process (sort of) (Score:5, Funny)
You are creating a non existent puzzle. The 'secret ' of Pozzolan concrete is well described in Wiki. Most Mediterranean cultures had it. Sorry to burst your pathetically small bubble.
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What wasn't in the manuals - because "everyone knows that" is what the materials needed were. That got lost, as the Roman concrete industry collapsed around about 500-600 CE.
However a combinatio
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Beware her breath (Score:2)
Sounds ridikularse (Score:2)
16500 tons of CO2 per year per person ? Cite? I'm guessing you fucked up by a factor of 1000, which means you are a politician not a techie. So go away and boil your head.
Re: Sounds ridikularse (Score:2, Funny)
Yes, shame on them for not ramping up from a lab test straight to an operation for the entire global population...
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A 10,000 ton project would cancel out 606 people, if they live in the US. On the other hand, it will cancel out almost 0.5% of the total emissions of Iceland (about 2M tons). If we assume some gains in efficiency and continuing to scale, it could be a significant factor on a national level. Obviously it needs to scale by order(s) of magnitude and translate to other geographies to be a *major* factor, but 0.5% of all output at the early stages isn't too shabby.
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You're right, I was off by 3 orders of magnitude. The chart I was looking at had one column in kilotons and the next column in just tons and I read it carelessly. It's 16.5 Tons per capita in the US, which means a 10,000 ton project would cancel out the pollution of a whopping 606 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
everyone will be required to move to iceland and bury their own CO2.
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Weight of O (oxygen) is 8, weight of C (carbon) is 12.
So a molecule of CO2 weights 28.
To produce 16500 tons of CO2 you need to burn 16500/28*12 tons of coal. So roughly 7tons of coal per American ... facepalm.
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You need to go back to your kindergarden (OK, infants school?) chemistry book and do some revision.
Alternatively, it could be amusing to watch you using lithium where you should be using oxygen. Just a second while I get some binoculars and a cheese and biscuits board (I can't stand popcorn).
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I mixed up proton count with true weight.
Does not change the relative weights at all.
So probably you should go back to "logic" and "argumentation".
But thanks for pointing out ... nothing. As no one else even grasps what you wrote :D or aim at. Interesting that people can be so smart and so dumb at the same time, don't you think so?
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Ah, so I actually only mixed up the weight of C ... so your post makes even less sense.
What exactly did you want to say?
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Scientists in Iceland (Score:2)
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From a population of 400,000 people, what they did is a notable achievement.
What is notable, is that 400,000 people live there at all. Iceland is not the most hospitable of environments to live. Yes, beautiful landscapes, nice toasty hot springs baths . . . but humans also need other basic things, like food and shelter in order to survive.
I believe that the Icelanders survived there through a combination of two things: Intelligence and Cooperation. When confronted with problems . . . the best thing humans can do, is to use their minds. We don't have hard shells, or poisonous
Re: Scientists in Iceland (Score:4, Funny)
So are you saying that Iceland is effectively a Beowulf cluster of people?
Because that's oddly appropriate in a number of ways.
Re: Scientists in Iceland (Score:2)
400k is generous, it's closer to 330k. And for most of Iceland's history it was closer to 60k.
The earlier carrying capacity was based primarily on livestock. Some increase was made possible with cold-weather caloric crops like potatoes, but especially with sea fishing. Today's big increase is made possible by imports.
Re: housing, though most of Iceland's history, it was turf houses. There are still a good number of people alive today who grew up in them. Today's housing is primarily concrete. You impo
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Iceland is no different than plenty of other places of the world. E.g. New Found Land or Scotland.
Despite their northern latitude they not even have a decent winter, due to the gulf stream.
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The Gulf Stream does not reach Iceland. The tail end of the North Atlantic Drift and the Irminger current bound us.
Our winters are fairly mild compared to our latitude, although certainly colder than Scotland, we're significantly further north in the same basin. Winter lows are generally what you might find in the mid to upper US great plains or northern New England. But winters are very long here, and very windy [wordpress.com].
Re: Scientists in Iceland (Score:2)
No thanks to our current government :( Cutbacks here have been pretty terrible.
What impressed me more is broadband connectivity. We're highly ranked despite being a rugged, low population density country in the middle of the North Atlantic. And many sites report Icelanders as being #1 per capita, such as Facebook.
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I have not been in Icelands (yet), wnted to come this year with http://www.drakenexpeditioname... [drakenexpe...merica.com] but they did not accept me into the crew.
Regarding internet, most Scandinavian (and we europeans count Icelands to it, "politically" at least) and Estonian countries have internet connections that dwarf the rest of Europe. Especially cellular. The perception is the mobile/cellular internet e.g. in Denmark is faster than my DSL at home. For some reason G3 really works there and is super fast.
Even in countries l
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My favorite is still having a fast internet connection when standing on top of a mountain ;)
Re: Perhaps the young earth creationists are corre (Score:2)
I never understand why young earth creationists feel the need to [mis]use science to justify things like the flood. They believe in an omnipotent god that created the world before he created the sun and stars - a god that is clearly capable of ignoring physics.
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Physics as we understand is little more than our explanation of our observations. These explanations tend to be consistent across materials and such but by no means do they deny or prevent any other explanation from being true also - even if little evidence is present. This is obvious when you look at the progression of metallurgy and materials like steel became available from the same raw materials as iron.
Now you ask why did something happen or why does the claim happen. Well, first - if you were teachin
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If I were to guess at a reason for a flood like that, probably to make a point.
Re: Prove that CO2 and global warming are linked f (Score:2)
Try again. CO2 levels 100k years ago were about 225ppm. The local peak was around 130kya, at around 280ppm.
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Having swum in warm-water springs in Britain with the snow settling in my hair, I look forward to visiting the Blue Lagoon one winter.
What's an Icelandic Slashdottir's favourite song? "Thorn in my side?"
fresh volcanic rock not widespread in US (Score:2)
Wrong R&D investment... (Score:2)
Like I said when this was posted previously this week...
This is the wrong thing to be investing in. All this carbon sequestration technology is pretty much pointless unless you can make it cost neutral on an industrial scale. It this processes costs money, even a little, the production of CO2 will NOT abate world wide. The likes of China, Russia and the Third World will simply choose the cheapest form of energy production and laugh at the western world for unilaterally deciding to only use more expensive
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Apart from that, it is the wrong solution to the wrong problem. The problem is that the equilibrium of the reaction
C + O2 <=> CO2
has moved too far to the CO2 part. If you store the CO2, the reaction does not change and effectively you are storing oxygen and carbon. This is exactly what happened in the Biosphere II experiment, where the concrete of the buildings took so much CO2 out of the air that the people had not enough oxygen left to breathe.
600 Americans emit 10,000 tons of CO2 per year (Score:3)
Feeling like an idiot today, sorry (Score:2)
If it only took 2 years to turn into stone, then maybe the Earth really IS only 6000 years old!
Energy usage? (Score:2)
How much energy is needed?
It's Iceland (Score:2)
EVERYTHING freezes up there. Where's the news?
And in an unrelated news story (Score:2)
Scientists have rocks in their heads (Score:2)
You know wouldn't it be so much more efficient if we just planted trees?
They breathe in this co2 stuff and put out air, as well as lower the temperature wherever they are.
Then the govt can buy the carbon credits from people that have more than 5 trees on their property, so much $$ per tree.
Tell me, where do you go to buy carbon credits? Who generates those now?
KISS (Score:1)
Plant more TREES
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You don't exhale or pass gas?
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...life giving gas.
So says A Mighty Wind. I suspect an agenda.
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They're just speeding up a natural process. If we stopped all CO2 output, natural weathering will cause the excess CO2 to get sequestered into limestone within a couple of thousand years, which is a good thing as without any CO2 sequestering we'd be much more Venus like, a planet with no CO2 sequestering. There is also a feedback loop, the more CO2, the more evaporation leading to more rain, which causes more weathering of rock, which leads to more CO2 sequestering.
Over geological periods this also partiall
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The evidence from the PETM is more like 100-150 kyr.
Increased [H2O(g)] will happen long before the oceans "boil" - and as you say, water in the vapour phase is a potent greenhouse gas. The calculations are tricky, and depend in large degree on the configuratio
Re:New Math Needed?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhh. When you start something new, you come up with a prediction. You don't necessarily base it on that much information.
Then you observe what happens when you do an experiment. Then you adjust your predictions.
This is how basic science is done. Nothing new here.
HOWEVER; what you're trying to do, is transfer errors in initial prediction into errors in observation and measurements. That is rather disingenuous of you. Please do argue honestly.
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Any branch of science that has a clue gives a range.. it is 'about' this old. That range is adjusted as new evidence brings to light things we do not know. If physics, geology, cosmology, and chemistry do not agree, then things are revisited.
Trying to say that an estimation error in one chemical
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There is no such thing as catastrophic man-made global warming,
Since you need so many disclaimers, one would presume that the drop of any single disclaimer would make the rest true. So by logic, and your statement, there is both "catastrophic global warming" and "man-made global warming". If not, the simpler "there is no global warming" would be the correct statement.
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So by logic, and your statement, there is both "catastrophic global warming" and "man-made global warming".
No, that's not logical at all. It's a transparent attempt at manipulating the feeble-minded, or grade-B trolling. Perhaps your post history would reveal which.
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Re: More bullshit from 'Climatedot' (Score:2)
Don't forget about http://my.freesite.com/users/~... [freesite.com]!
Re: Reduce sea level at the same time (Score:1)
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Your premises are messed up. No-one is proposing that CCS would provide a long term (e.g., a single millennium, 1kyr) way to continue to use large amounts of fossil fuels. But let's consider the case that people do actually do it that way, and use approximately the current levels of carbon-based fuels.
Currently we're taking one mole of oxygen from the atmosphere for each mole of carbon that goes into CO2 (other products, e.g. water,