Climate clippings 175

1. New technology offers hope for storing carbon dioxide in basalt

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) has been converted to rock and stored underground in a trial in Iceland.

    Most CO₂ sequestration projects inject and store “supercritical CO₂”, which is CO₂ gas that has been compressed under pressure to considerably decrease its volume*. However, supercritical CO₂ is buoyant, like a gas, and this approach has thus proved controversial due to the possibility of leaks from the storage reservoir upwards into groundwater and eventually back to the atmosphere.

To put it briefly, in the trial they dissolved CO₂ in water which then is acidic and attacks the rocks to form solid carbonate minerals. Continue reading Climate clippings 175