As the reality of global warming sinks in, more people are trying to reduce their output of CO2, while scientists are scrambling to find ways to further reduceCO2, or at best, stabilizing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Although the United States Government (Bush Administration) are doing little to nothing to reduce fossil fuel usage, along with the huge corporations, that create mass amounts of CO2 from their industries, this crowd of greedy, power hungry persons, care little about the environment or others whom they share the earth with. Some scientists have been working frantically against time, to try and find a solution to stop, or reduce the amounts of CO2 from our atmosphere. (C02 causes GLOBAL WARMING)
There have been some efforts, to develop technologies, which can capture and contain CO2 emissions, before they reach the atmosphere. The so-called new break through is called carbon sequestration. It could enable the U.S. to keep using its most abundant and dirtiest fossil fuel, (coal). Growing and preserving forests, along with plant-heavy ecosystems that take up carbon dioxide by respiration may accomplish some sequestration. But a big part of the sequestration process, involves taking and transferring CO2, from power plant exhaust, and injecting it into natural underground reservoirs, and rock formations.
Basalt transforms CO2 into calcium carbonate equal of seashells or limestone; this process can take place in a matter of weeks or months. Thus making CO2 into a solid. And because most of the Pacific Northwest is abundant in basalt, carbon sequestration of this type could be an excellent regional method, of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The only problem is, in a lab created scenario it works, BUT what would it do 3,000 feet below the Columbia River Basin?
The Columbia River Basalt Group, comprises about 300 lava flows that ran fast and often in the Miocene epoch between 6 million and 17 million years ago. It covers about 65,000 square miles, in places to a depth of three miles. The Columbia River basin is the worlds youngest and smallest of the worlds major continental flood basalts
Proper carbon sequestration requires a chamber or system, of interconnected pores, to accept a mixture of carbon dioxide, as well as a competent caprock above it, to keep the CO2 from escaping. Spent oil and gas formations and saline aquifers contained in sedimentary rock have usually been considered the most likely candidates for geosequestration; experts frequently point out that oil and gas have been safely held for millions of years in such formations.
At depths below around 3,000 feet, CO2 becomes supercritical - that is, it turns into a liquid slightly less dense and much runnier than water. Injection pressure and the weight of the earth above it will force the CO2 to dissolve in groundwater residing in aquifers and distributed throughout the small cracks and holes in porous sections of basalt. Dissolved CO2 makes water fizzy; mildly acidic "pore water" reacts with minerals in the basalt, principally calcium, and eventually breaks up CO2 molecules, sequestering their carbon in solid deposits of limestone.
Not all information is in, on this new and controversial option to rid the planet of C02, there are many unanswered questions that this process has yet to address. Are the results, that this new process achieves, going to create new problems? Which might be detrimental, to the health of the planet, and to the health of the planets occupants? I guess we will have to wait and see.
In The Weeks to Come: Problems/Hazards of injecting C02 in the ground.