Putting a lid on carbon dioxide

[Bruce]

This was the title of an article in Chemical and Engineering News, December 20th, 2004, page 36. The opening paragraph:

It sounds so painless: Concentrate, capture, pressurize, and inject carbon dioxide deep into the Earth's geologic formation and avoid, or at least delay, the likely damage of global warming. There, the greenhouse gas would rest forever, providing the U.S. with time to develop a long-term solution to overcome the climate-change impact of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

As a PhD Inorganic chemist, my official position on this is:

BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!

 

[MESchlum]

But it's so obvious! I mean, you can't go around pumping gas into the earth's crust (it might rise), so you'll need to compact that nasty CO2... into liquid, or solid form, say.

I hear there's this place where they have plenty of the solid stuff, we could use it as a template to make out own. Other areas have lots of the liquid, and it seems to be easy to transport, so we should set up factories everywhere to make it

Of course, we need to find a good place to leave it in. Fortunately, there are lots of areas where people dig holes deep in the ground and pull stuff out, so we could just fill them up afterwards. I hear the US has just recently acquired a large stretch of sand with lots of storage space underneath it. Maybe they hope to fill it?

 

[cesium]

Solid CO2 (dry ice) would be easier to store then the liquid
form of co2 due to the fact that liquid co2 only exists at high
pressures.

I personaly think that there would be major impacts of removing
vast quantities of a gas from our atmosphere, especialy effects
on plants and alges.

another issue would be the energy required to extract CO2 from
the air, drill into the ground, and either inject the gas or solidify the gas and store it somehow. It may be more efficiant and better
to use a chemical or electrochemical process to seperate the carbon and the oxygen.

 

[CBL4]

CO2 could be used to force additional natural gas and oil out from somewhat depleted fields. I am not sure if the CO2 would remain in the earth or not.

CBL

 

[Diamond]

There's a much simpler answer: stop breathing. That way a) less carbon dioxide to cause global warming (which its never managed to do in the past and b) your worries about climate change will be over!

 

[CBL4]

I did a quick look and pumping CO2 into oil fields in real and still pretty minor but big enough to have some potential

In some cases, production from an oil or natural gas reservoir can be enhanced by pumping CO2 gas into the reservoir to push out the product, which is called enhanced oil recovery. The United States is the world leader in enhanced oil recovery technology, using about 32 million tons of CO2 per year for this purpose.

http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/sequestration/geologic/index.html

To put that in perspective, in 1994 the world produced about 24 billion tons of CO2. Assuming a 25% increase over the last decade, that means the US is sequestering 0.1% of the CO2 the world produces. In some ways this is peanuts but since pumping the CO2 actually increases profits, it has the potential to grow.

Here is a link to other experimental sequestering techniques:
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/sequestration/index.html

CBL

 

[Bruce]

The whole idea is so ridiculous, it's barely worth debating at all, but the fact that it's a feature article in C&E News boggles my mind. Putting aside all the logistical absurdities, it's not even theoretically sound. It would be the equivilant of perpetual motion or lifting yourself up by your boot straps. For those that don't understand what I mean, lets do a scale down:

Imagine you have a lump of coal and you design a lab-scale electric generator. Let's give the theoriticians the benefit of the doubt and assume that our system is 100% efficient, and 100% of the coal is completely combusted. We burn our coal to generate heat, which boils water to make steam, which is used to power an electric generator, which is used to power a lightbulb. Our forum engineers could tell you how long you can power a light bulb given the mass of coal and 100% system efficiency.

Now what we want to do is design a system that will trap, isolate, and compress all the of carbon dioxide that comes from that lump of coal and attach a pump that will pump all of it into the ground. We want to do all of this using the energy generated from that lump of coal. Do you really think that you could design such a system and power it with the energy from that lump of coal, AND have enough left over to power the light bulb at all, let alone for a reasonable amount of time and cost.

Now throw in the fact that coal powered electric plants are terribly inefficient, the logistical problems of degining a low energy CO2 trapping and compressing system, scale it all back up to real-world, then ask who is going to pay for all of this. Doesn't this proposed system sound an awful lot like a perpetual motion machine? It's taking more energy to trap the CO2 than what is generated from the coal.

The only way to get around this is to pull energy from a non-coal source such as solar, hydroelectric, or nuclear, but if you're going to use all this energy to trap CO2, why not just use that energy to power everything in the first place? Aaargh.

And what makes you think that if you pump CO2 into the ground that it's going to stay there?!? Aaarrgh!!!

 

[MESchlum]

Turn the CO2 into oil and coal. It's easier to store that way.

 

[Bruce]

I should have been an engineer. I'm starting to understand why engineers rarely do research. There is no way in hell that most engineers would get a government grant. Most engineers would be spending more time explaining why it wouldn't work and how expensive it would be than suggesting how it might work and how it might some day be better than existing technologies.

Our senior engineer got a bigger laugh out of this article than I did and went into further detail about the absurdities of trying to eliminate carbon dioxide from industrial processes.

 

[CBL4]

Our senior engineer got a bigger laugh out of this article than I did and went into further detail about the absurdities of trying to eliminate carbon dioxide from industrial processes.

What kind of engineer?

I know a man with a masters in chemistry who understands that it is perfectible possible to use some of the energy from coal burning to bind the CO2 with other materials and still have excess energy. It may or may not be feasible but it is possible.

As far as pumping CO2 into the ground, the energy can almost be cost free. At night there is an excess of energy from nuclear and hydroelectric plants. This is especially true in the summer but in most places it is true even in the winter.

CBL

 

[Soapy Sam]

"CO2 could be used to force additional natural gas and oil out from somewhat depleted fields. I am not sure if the CO2 would remain in the earth or not. "


Hmm. I was on a well in Saudi once , where CO2 was bleeding into the mud from a carbonate reservoir. To maintain the mud pH above 9, I was using a truckload of lime a day. Next to H2S, CO2 is about the most corrosive substance you are likely to encounter in a well.

Anyone wanting to put the stuff in on purpose can find himself another mud engineer.

 

[pgwenthold]

Hmm. I was on a well in Saudi once , where CO2 was bleeding into the mud from a carbonate reservoir. To maintain the mud pH above 9, I was using a truckload of lime a day. Next to H2S, CO2 is about the most corrosive substance you are likely to encounter in a well.

You want to know what CO2 can do? Open a soft drink and stick your tongue in it. If you can hold your tongue in carbonated beverage for more than 30 seconds without being in EXTREME pain, then you are far better than I am. I gave up in 10 seconds.

The pain is generated from the carbonic andhydrase in saliva that converts the CO2 into carbonic acid, and the acid is going after your tongue.

(BTW, Bruce, I learned that from CE News a couple of years ago)

 

[Rolfe]

Do I gather they're actually doing this? Someone else brought the subject into conversation on Saturday afternoon (as we were chewing over the global warming/dimming dichotomy as presented on Horizon on Thursday) and he seemed to be implying that the procedure was actually underway.

The "BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!" was endorsed with knobs on, by the way.

Rolfe.

 

[Bruce]

You want to know what CO2 can do? Open a soft drink and stick your tongue in it. If you can hold your tongue in carbonated beverage for more than 30 seconds without being in EXTREME pain, then you are far better than I am. I gave up in 10 seconds.

The pain is generated from the carbonic andhydrase in saliva that converts the CO2 into carbonic acid, and the acid is going after your tongue.

(BTW, Bruce, I learned that from CE News a couple of years ago)

Cool! I've never tried that one. My dad told me about a little experiment he tried as a little kid. He decided to see what would happen if he put a recently yanked baby tooth in a glass of Pepsi over night. The next morning, it was gone. Completely dissolved. Gotta love carbonic and citric acid.

Very interesting story from Soapy Sam. That's the kind of first-hand news you can get here that you will never find on the news channels or from science articles written by elite college professors. Nobody wants to hear about the draw-backs of putting a lofty ideas in to practice.

Rolfe, tell us more about this conversation.

 

[Michael Redman]

Turn the CO2 into oil and coal. It's easier to store that way.

If we don't find anything better in the near term, I think this will be done for us, without any intervention on our part. It will just take a little longer than we're willing to wait.

 

[pgwenthold]

Cool! I've never tried that one. My dad told me about a little experiment he tried as a little kid. He decided to see what would happen if he put a recently yanked baby tooth in a glass of Pepsi over night. The next morning, it was gone. Completely dissolved. Gotta love carbonic and citric acid.

Pepsi's got a lot of phosphoric acid. Probably more of a problem than the citric acid.

I told my General Chemistry class about the "tongue in coke" thing one year. Of course, they all went out and tried it. Most said they could only last 20 seconds or so, but one woman claimed she never had a problem. She was a rugby player and had a high threshold for pain, she says.

The next class, two guys show up with a cooler with Coke and a glass, and they say, "We don't believe her. Make her come up front and show us."

I'm kind of like, no, fellas, I can't quite do that. I agree that there's no way she didn't have any problems, but no, I am not going to make this woman come up in front of class and demonstate that she can stick her tongue in glass of Coke indefinately.

 

[Bruce]

Pepsi's got a lot of phosphoric acid. Probably more of a problem than the citric acid.

I told my General Chemistry class about the "tongue in coke" thing one year. Of course, they all went out and tried it. Most said they could only last 20 seconds or so, but one woman claimed she never had a problem. She was a rugby player and had a high threshold for pain, she says.

The next class, two guys show up with a cooler with Coke and a glass, and they say, "We don't believe her. Make her come up front and show us."

I'm kind of like, no, fellas, I can't quite do that. I agree that there's no way she didn't have any problems, but no, I am not going to make this woman come up in front of class and demonstate that she can stick her tongue in glass of Coke indefinately.

I didn't know you were a chemistry teacher. High school or college? What's it like? Did you do any industry work prior to teaching? I've considered applying for teaching positions, but I don't think the salary range will pay my bills.

 

[pgwenthold]

I didn't know you were a chemistry teacher. High school or college? What's it like? Did you do any industry work prior to teaching? I've considered applying for teaching positions, but I don't think the salary range will pay my bills.

College. Only one time have I ever even set foot in an industrial lab, to look at some equipment that they were considering donating.

In terms of what it is like, let me just say that I don't consider myself a teacher, as such, more of a scientist who teaches (although, what am I doing today? Preparing notes for Organic class...)

If you keep your back issues of CE News, you can find two references to me in there last year. One is in the Sci/Tech Concentrates in the 2/2 issue, and one of my students is in the ACS fellowship section of the 11/29 issue.

 

[B.S]

Cool! My dad told me about a little experiment he tried as a little kid. He decided to see what would happen if he put a recently yanked baby tooth in a glass of Pepsi over night. The next morning, it was gone. Completely dissolved. Gotta love carbonic and citric acid.

The Mythbusters did the "tooth in the cola" thing and the tooth didn't dissolve. Just discolored.

 

[Abdul Alhazred]

There's a much simpler answer: stop breathing. That way a) less carbon dioxide to cause global warming (which its never managed to do in the past and b) your worries about climate change will be over!

Kidding aside, if we really need to reduce CO2, why not plant a lot of trees?