Carbon Capture & Storage

Whether they pump the CO2 into a mountain or underground is of no consequence. The likelihood of leakage is a very significant issue. What happens during earthquakes? Will this massively pressurized bubble create a release in some harmful way?

I just think that they're putting a lot of effort into something that's going to be fraught with foreseeable AND unforeseeable problems and cost. It sounds like her research is being handsomely funded via the coal industry... Did she mention anything about that?

Also - there are reams of articles on the subject and the controversial aspects therein. That should say something about the viability of carbon sequestration alone. I think that there may be a need for something like this in the future simply out of necessity, but I don't think it's the right solution for where we really want to go in the future. All this will do is to divert funds (and focus) that are critically needed for technology THAT WILL create the proper bridge to our future energy and cleanliness needs.

Dr. Benson has a nice lab set up at Stamford. I'm sure she gets a lot of grant money studying her pet problem.

Now lets talk about the way engineering really works, for those who believe we should rush into things we've never tried :

This form of carbon sequestration ( essentially pumping it into sandstone ) relies on a few assumptions; namely:

1) that the sandstone mountain/quarry you pump it into is one big long vein. As you pump more CO2 in there will be the necessary friction/viscosity of pumping even more in. If you don't overcome this viscosity ( with increasing pressure ) the flow will slow to a crawl. Net effect is that we will be pumping a little CO2 into sandstone in a LOT of places.

2) Since we need a "cap" to hold the CO2 in, I'm assuming that this process is somewhat reversible. Since no mountain is either airtight or geologically stable, you will start to hear a "hisss" after a while; negating the whole point of the excercise.

3) We don't know the effect of CO2 leakage on nearby ecosystems ( e.g. drown all the fish in a nearby river as its ground leaks CO2 up ). Also if the CO2 should leak into an underground reservoir, you may create a BOMB! ( yes, this depends on the initial pump pressure, but remember the cap and the high pressure needed to overcome viscosity ? )

4) What about the energy required to compress the CO2 in the first place ? This makes the entire energy production process less efficient as we must burn more carbon to sequester some of it back in.
Now less efficient forms of energy production mean higher cost.

5) We would also have to build pipelines to these sandstone mountains ( you don't really expect a truck to be energy efficient, do you ? )

And all this for a global warming effect that may not even happen, probably won't happen soon, and might happen anyway due to the Chinese, Brazilians, volcanos and extra decomposing matter ( trash, sewage, vegitation )

Let's shelve this under "Solutions looking for a problem"

If CO2 sequestration can be done, the experts agree that the soonest this may occur at scale is 10-15 years from now. Also, the marketers of the concept of clean coal agree that sequestration will double the cost of coal energy. My opinion is that we need not divert our energy from renewables to this supposed solution. If our resources and innovation are focused on developing energy from renewable sources, all signs are that Nobel Prize-worthy discoveries are close enough to our finger tips that in 10-15 years there will be technologies that will replace coal for far less expense. "Clean Coal" is a diversion that would only sap away our power to succeed.

Is it carbon sequestration, CO2 sequestration, or a lot of oxygen sequestration?

We are pulling carbon and hydrogen from the ground. We talk about sequestering carbon but are actually exploring sequestering CO2. Won't the hydrogen we don't sequester also bind to oxygen/O2 to create water? How much extra/excess Oxygen (O2) do we have in our atmosphere? Will removing the oxygen for both these processes impact us? Who has studied this?
I need convincing that CO2 sequestration is a way to go rather than taking CO2 & sunlight to make algae and sequester that hydrocarbon.
I want to hear about the chemistry, elemental free availability, and potential environmental impacts.

Sadly, most of that which goes by the phrase "clean Coal" is really just marketing and hype. Just scrubbing a little sulfur or mercury from the coal does not make it "clean Coal" Burning western coal to make electricity releases 100 times the amount of radiation as an operating nuclear power plant while producing an equivalent amount of power. Re-injecting coal plant CO2 into wells requires some care and environmental review. Well re-injection of CO2 may work in special situations but should not be viewed as a general approach to reducing green house gases because of the serious problem of inadvertently polluting ground water resources. There is however at least one coal technology that holds out real promise of reducing the climate change impacts of using coal and that is Direct Carbon Fuel Cells (DCFC).

Direct Carbon Fuel Cells convert the chemical energy stored in coal directly into electricity without going through the intermediate step of burning the coal. Dr. John Cooper at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has pioneered the development of specially constructed fuel cells that run at elevated temperatures on the order of 700 to 750 degrees C to extract the chemical energy stored in coal at a demonstrated efficiency of around 80%. This is double the typical efficiency of well designed coal fired power plants which operate at efficiencies around 40%.

The following are some of the key benefits of Direct Carbon Fuel Cells

1) DCFCs decrease emissions of carbon dioxide, which are largely responsible for global warming.
Direct Carbon Fuel Cells double the energy conversion efficiency of coal in electric power generation. You only need to produce half of the amount of CO2 to generate a given amount of electrical energy.

2) The CO2 produced by DCFCs is quite pure compared to the exhaust stack gases of coal fired power plants. The CO2 produced by DCFCs is clean enough to economically be used as a reactant in many industrial processes. The CO2 is also nicely segregated within the fuel cell so it is easy to efficiently collect the nearly pure CO2 to permit convenient use or sequestration.

3) DCFCs do not require expensive noble metal electrodes unlike many other fuel cell technologies. DCFC fuel cells should be scalable to very large sizes without adding greatly to proportioned costs of generating power.

4) DCFC fuel cells avoid some of the most annoying air pollution consequences of using coal. There is no need to release large amounts of particulates into the air. DCFC fuel cells should produce significantly less sulfur and mercury contaminants relative to coal fired power plants. DCFC fuel cells do not distribute particulates containing radioactive Thorium and Uranium contaminants frequently present in western coal. The output of the DCFC fuel cell is easily used electricity although a DC to AC electrical power transformation may be required to feed the electricity into the power grid.

Up until now DCFC fuel cells have been demonstrated in laboratories but have not been built for commercial power generation. Government should accelerate the development of DCFC technology by funding an industrial scaled implementation of the laboratory proven gravity fed DCFC fuel cells designed by Dr. John Cooper. Building and test operating a few scaled industrial plant sized cells should reveal any remaining materials and electrode deficiencies that need addressing in the development of this promising approach to cleaner use of America's abundant coal resources.

Direct Carbon Fuel Cells produce half the amount of CO2 Green House Gas as any other approach to using coal.

Respectfully, Robert Steinhaus - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Retired)