OK, let's just cut right through it. Carbon sequestration as it currently stands will not work long term.
Why? In the CO2 molecule, we don't breathe this bit "C", but we do breathe this bit "O2", and we know politicians, all things being equal, will not respond quickly enough to stop putting the O2 under the ground.
Solution? Simple, we bubble the smoke stack outputs through algae and then put the algae as a slurry under the ground. We need to make sure we use a benign algae as we do not want a toxic one seeping into our ground water.
This algae can be acclimatized to smoke from the smoke stacks. And to reduce the impact on our water supplies, it can probably be acclimated to to salt water as well. We have a lot of it underground here in Australia. This would allow us to deliver the carbon as a slurry underground and keep the precious oxygen above ground.
The thing that makes this solution so viable is it doesn't change our economy. Everything can go on as normal.
The people at MIT were talking a 40% reduction in GHG emissions, conceivably adding a light in the tubes could increase sequestration by 60 to 80% for now, with better results as the technology evolves. I think the slurry is a better use of the resulting algae production, though there is still merit in t's production as a biofuel.
There is also the possibility of using algae in paper production as well, reducing the need for wood chipping. Something I'd be quite happy about.
Labels: efficiency, emission reductions, greenhouse gas |