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45 comments on Weyburn, CO2 Injection and Carbon Sequestration

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RedDan on December 15, 2005 - 12:28am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
The only way to "have some lunch, eat most of it, and maybe get some cake, too" is to actively strip CO2 out of the atmosphere at a rate greater than we are putting it in.

Such discussions and a good bit of modeling and experimentation are underway at Los Alamos National Labs...Los Alamos Press Release

Now, don't get me wrong - I am highly skeptical of the feasibility of such a setup, both economically and thermodynamically...

But, absent any other alternative, and given that the climate seems to have reached a tipping point - or will soon - it seems to me that the only real way to go is remediation - "terraforming" as it were.

There are some folks thinking about bioremediation, and others working on mineralogical (thin films reacting with force-fed (solar or wind pump) atmosphere at 370 ppm CO2 making solid MgCO3 or CaCO3) remediation...and that, to me seems about the only way to go...unless we can stop producing excess CO2 and kick the hydrocarbon habit...neither of which, frankly, seems very likely right now.

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Nick Rouse on December 15, 2005 - 8:27am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
A wild blue skies idea that I have not even tried to put numbers to but if the scheme envisioned in the Los Almos National Labs scheme could remove atmospheric carbon dioxide at a fraction of the cost of the equivalent quantity of gasoline is it possible to synthesise methanol from water, atmospheric carbon dioxide and solar, wind or wave energy. This could be used in fuel cell vehicles, either with the direct methanol type or reformed to hydrogen. The carbon dioxide would be circulating in the atmosphere and therefore there would be no net increase. Methanol is easily transported, stored both in bulk and in vehicles and could use the existing distribution system and would solve the intermittency problem of solar etc. energy.
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eric blair on December 15, 2005 - 9:45am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The idea of seperating the CO2 from the air and making Methanol had been dubed the SeaLand process by another group.

A fine idea.   IF you have excess electromotive force with nothing to do.

That is a big IF.

I spent a day looking into a basic set of Eq. to do the sealand process.   I was looking at over $250,000 to set up with wind generators, no land costs, and a spitballing of the reaction/process cost to make Methonal.  100 Liters a day production.

You might be able to count on selling Nitrogen Gas/Liquid Nitrogen, until there is mass Methonal production (oversupply of N2) or a reduced industrial need for Nitrogen (via recession) You might be able to turn an additional buck splitting water, taking the H2 and combining with your excessive N2.   But that model needs cheap, excessive energy.

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Nick Rouse on December 15, 2005 - 10:19am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Can you give any more details of the reactions proposed?
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step back on December 16, 2005 - 11:53am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
For those thinking about simply pumping CO2 into the ground, here is a little side reaction you need to think about:
http://www.glencoe.com/sec/science/chemistry/mc/pow/chapter18.shtml
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TJ on December 15, 2005 - 11:12am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Where do you get the oxides?  Almost all calcium oxide is produced by baking the carbonate, which would tend to defeat the purpose.
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Nick Rouse on December 15, 2005 - 12:40pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
That is the purpose, not to sequester the CO2 but to concentrate the CO2 from the few hundred parts per million in the atmosphere up to near 100% for sequestering elsewhere
in a cyclic process.
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Engineer-Poet on December 16, 2005 - 12:52am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
If you are going to capture CO2 for something, you might as well capture energy at the same time.

There's some research I just got the goods on (direct carbon fuel cells) which is pretty much ideally suited for a cycle which does just that.  I hope to be blogging that as soon as I get enough think-time to organize it.

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RedDan on December 15, 2005 - 9:39pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
One suggestion I have read about (and discussed with some expert aqueous geochemists) and thought about my little own self, as a Marine Geologist/Structural Geologist is that large amounts of MgO (which would react to form MgCO3, aka Dolomite), FeO (which would react to form FeCO3, aka siderite), MnO (to form MnCO3, or rhodocrosite)...and so on Here is a LONG list of potential candidates comprising the large and varied carbonate mineral class.

How to get those various oxides WITHOUT resorting to methods that release CO2?

Grind up mineral deposits.

Where to get those mineral deposits, specifically some of the more exotic ones?

Ophiolites and the ocean floor.

MnO, MgO, FeO and some of the other weirdo oxides are found in abundance in those geologic settings.

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45 comments on Weyburn, CO2 Injection and Carbon Sequestration

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