‘Engineer aims to bury CO2 with a leak proof technology’
Every day, every hour, every minute and every second we are inching towards global warming. To battle with this problem countries around the world are trying every possibility to ‘go green’. Well towards that end, Engineering Professor Steven Bryant at the University of Texas at Austin has come up with an idea to bury CO2 with a leak proof technology, a technology that will eliminate the risk of CO2 escaping via buoyancy.
‘CO2 Storage’
The previous approach of capturing carbon, involves a long procedure i.e. to extract CO2 from fossil fuels, compressing and transporting it and lastly injecting it into deep underground formation. The main problem associated with the standard approach of carbon dioxide sequestration is that, the carbon dioxide which is less dense than water, will escape from the storage formation through buoyancy.
The Engineer feels that:
He and his team have a novel solution, instead of injecting the compressed CO2 directly into a deep underground formation, he suggests, drill wells in the deep, salt-water filled formation, pump out the salt water, dissolve the carbon dioxide into the salt water in a mixing tank at the surface, and then inject the CO2 –laden water back into the same formation. Since the CO2-laden water is denser than compressed carbon dioxide and slightly denser than the original brine, it will have no tendency to rise toward the surface.
ECO-Factor:”It eliminates the risk of sequestered carbon dioxide escaping from the storage formation”
The project involves a cost higher than the standard approach, but the cost can be regarded as the price of risk reduction. We’ll have to wait for the implementation of the idea and its success, as every single step counts for greening the world.
‘Leak-free CO2 storage promises to be eco-friendly’
Via: UPI