Carbon Capture
Climate change is happening, that is fact, and has been happening since the end of the last ice age, thought to be around 20,000 years ago. The rate of increase of global warming is the most debated subject amongst the scientific community, and the best evidence, and the most controversial, is the actual rate of increase of global warming, and what effects are fuelling the increase.
Current thinking acknowledges that three so called greenhouse gases, or to be completely scientifically correct two gases and water vapour, not a true gas, but a high temperature state of water, the two gases being carbon dioxide and methane.
Methane is a naturally abundant hydrocarbon formed by the decomposition of vegetable matter, carbon dioxide being a by product of the combustion of carboniferous fossil fuels and ligneous matter.
Methane is the by product of vegetative matter digested in animal gastrointestinal systems converting feedstock into energy. This production of Methane has been a fact for millennia whilst vegetable feedstock has been consumed by whatever species has existed on this planet, reptilian and mammalian.
Carbon dioxide, it is claimed by some climatologists, has increased as a unique effect of the growth of human populations, and their practises which have been necessary to enhance the benefits and lifestyle of human population by scientific and productive endeavour. Another train of reasoning is that carbon dioxide, by product of volcanic activity, has always existed in the atmosphere, and because volcanic activity is the product of an effect that makes our earth unique in the solar system, and that effect is referred to as tectonic plate movement.
As our planet is two thirds covered by water, saline and fresh, has a cloud cover which is mainly water vapour, and as a consequence, water precipitates in the form of liquid water across the temperate zones, this precipitation dissolves carbon dioxide from the atmosphere converting it into hydro carbonic acid.
Thus nature provides in itself a natural form of greenhouse gas capture, in that the seas, oceans, rivers and lakes take up the acid reacting with chemical compounds dissolved in the water and forming stable compounds trapping this gas both in land masses and oceans.
The oceans and seas also contain micro organisms, algaes, and absorb the products in their environment as food effectively producing a carbon cycle depleting the dissolved compounds in the oceans creating the availability of further capture.
There is a down side to this natural capture of greenhouse gasses in that the acidity levels of the oceans will inevitably rise, some scientific proof of this happening already exists and a consequence will be marine life depletion affecting the natural balance of nature.
The current scientific debate suggests that this natural carbon capture effect cannot be considered to be an indefinite positive effect, and new interventionist techniques must be made available to support this natural effect and speed up carbon capture to reduce the apparent greenhouse effect increasing global warming.
A number of interventionist techniques are currently under investigation and are thought to be scientifically and economically viable to be utilised globally.
The capture, of carbon dioxide in the emissions of coal, oil and gas combustion, in power stations, producing electricity, and transportation, and injecting into underground depleted oil and gas fields on land, undersea, or into uneconomically minable underground coal deposits, using them as carbon dioxide storage facilities is being considered.
This technique is viable as a solution, in the United Kingdom, having many depleted oil and gas reservoirs available for storage, and even many more unworkable coal deposits to store carbon dioxide.
A number of interesting small scale projects are in the design stage for investigation.
On a smaller scale, when the building of up to 50 megawatt biomass power stations expands, which, will be inevitable, as these units produce less carbon dioxide levels than the larger coal, oil and gas, power stations, carbon dioxide can be pumped in small quantities directly into horticultural units for fruit, and vegetable growing.
Sulphur dioxide has been captured from fossilised fuel burning, electricity producing power stations, chemically reacting with natural occurring chemical compounds of calcium and producing a product called gypsum, used in the house building market as wall lining product in board form.
Engineers and scientists in all disciplines are currently working together worldwide to find ways of slowing down the output of harmful emissions of greenhouse effect, global warming exhaust gasses.
Where combined effect of greenhouse effect harmful emissions capture, and the ever increasing drive to lower emissions can be created, man inevitably will be able to slow down global warming leading to the ultimate goal of stabilisation of the earths’ atmosphere temperature.
Robin Burn
August 2010
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