Carbon Sequestration Just a Pipe Dream?

Re-burying the world's carbon emissions might seem like a logical solution to global warming. But it seems to only work in a very limited number of places.

A working paper released by the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center entitled "Implications of generator siting for CO₂ pipeline infrastructure" discusses the issues regarding the geographical locations of power plants, their fuel, their loads, and finally, where (if anywhere) the CO₂ they produce will be sequestered. It also addresses the costs associated with transportation of the fuel, electricity, and CO₂, with some scary implications.

As the above image illustrates, most of the power plants reside in areas close to their loads, in other words, their end users. This is because it's very expensive to transport electricity, so the closer you are to your customers, the lower your costs. The problem is, most plant sites are several hundred miles, if not further, away from fuel sites, like coal mines. To make the problem even more complicated, the CO₂ sequestration sites are again, several hundred miles away from the emissions source. No problem, you say, just use pipes to pump the CO₂. Well, that seems to be the plan. Unfortunately what this means for us is that the landscape will be criss-crossed with lovely pipelines (which I'm sure we would all love to have in our backyards), to deliver the CO₂ to sequestration sites.

Not only that, these pipes have to be under high pressures to keep the CO₂ at a supercritical fluid state, requiring a lot of energy and equipment, not to mention pumping stations along the way. To add insult to injury, the pipes will, like those in the arctic, disrupt animals' ranges and migration routes. At least if the pipes leak, we're not contaminating the environs with oil or flammable gases. There will just be a small dead zone will where everything dies from lack of oxygen. It's all very exciting stuff.

Via Treehugger

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What to do with CO2
written by jeff, October 29, 2007

Why don't we sequester all that carbon in something useful like carbon fiber? Green plants are pretty good at turning CO2 into hydrocarbon chains. I'm surprised some biomimicry hot shot hasn't engineered a chloroplast that leaves out the hydrogen. There's got to be a precursor to carbon fiber in there somewhere. And this could be done on site instead of piping or hauling liquefied gas everywhere. I just can't believe we can't do any better than that.

biochar
written by harold, October 29, 2007

The more I read about biochar and agrichar, the more I feel it could be a viable sequestration option. Till some into fields that have trouble keeping water and you have a great soil amendment.

Give it time
written by mark@talkclimatechange, October 30, 2007

Most of the mitigation schemes that I have read about so far seem to be a bit on the mad side. All have some significant problems to overcome.

But give it time. Like any type of product development there is usually a ratio of 100 ideas give 1 product, and of 20 products, one is a success.

The only thing to watch out for is that the other 19 products don't wreck the earth in the process...

...
written by John Humphrey, October 30, 2007

There already hundreds if not thousands of pipes that are used to transport petroleum products around the country. I don't think it would be that hard to just use the same routes even if we can't use the same pipes...

rip van winkle
written by celia, November 24, 2007

If we could sleep for a few decades, maybe the plants could catch up.

carbon sqestration in conceations of sea
written by markus, December 11, 2007

Using the sludge at the bottom of the ocean to chemically "build" new landmasses is a concept I have never heard discussed. If there is a way to combine the carbon and other minerals, could there not be a solution to advance a chemistry of stone customization and the compatibility of custom ecosystems from residue that is already in a semi-fluid state where new oceanic farming posibilities exist ? We could explore the gyre dynamics for power, and deep sea smokers for heat, using robotics, super simplified
mechanisms that could operate on a remote control -maintenance- free level. Congealing a concrete
from combinations of elements and /or bacteria could be a separate branch of science. The earth does this already, we just put a bit of creative science and faith into it. Anyway, I guess as a concept it's new.
. I welcome any comments but no spam please !

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