Earthsky Interviews
Juerg Matter on Iceland’s new carbon storage project
12-28-2009 - Energy
Juerg Matter: Iceland is in the North, close to the polar circle, so they are the first ones to feel global warming, because their ice caps are retreating at a really, really fast pace.
Juerg Matter is a geochemist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. He talked to EarthSky about CarbFix, a new carbon dioxide storage project he helped establish near Reykjavik, Iceland. Matter said CarbFix will pioneer the technique of converting CO2 into solid rock. Carbon dioxide, or C02, is a greenhouse gas known to contribute to climate change.
Juerg Matter: We are in Iceland because there’s a specific type of rock – it’s basalt – and it allows the conversion, the change of the gas into the rock.
Beginning in 2010, he explained, CarbFix will dissolve a steady stream of CO2 waste from a local power plant and inject it into basalt. After interacting with basalt’s minerals, the dissolved CO2 – which is actually a seltzer-like liquid – will turn into minerals such as calcite, or dolomite.
Juerg Matter: Our goal is to store it in a more permanent form, because when you store it as a solid, it cannot leak back.
He added that one risk of the project is water pollution by metals pushed out of basalt by the reaction with dissolved CO2, which he said his team will closely monitor. Matter believes CarbFix will prove to have a very low environmental risk, and spark international interest.
Juerg Matter: Basaltic rocks occur everywhere. You can find basaltic rocks on every continent on Earth.
Matter mentioned especially large deposits in the Western United States and India. He hopes to see CarbFix technology exported, and used around the world.
Juerg Matter: I hope we can prove that our concepts that we tested in the laboratory also work in nature. We have a lot of discussion about energy here in the US and Europe and everywhere. Obviously, carbon dioxide storage is not the silver bullet solution for climate change, but it’s one of them, and it’s a good one. Our goal is to store it in a more permanent form, because when you store it as a solid, it cannot leak back.
Written by Lindsay Patterson
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Juerg Matter
Juerg Matter studies geologic carbon sequestration and how fluid-gas-rock reactions can lead to secure, permanent sequestration of industrial carbon dioxide. He is also working on how to sequester carbon dioxide in ocean sediments. As a hydrogeologist, he’s led a number of international teams on the intersecting challenges of climate change, geology, and energy, including ones ... >>
In another E&S podcast, I asked the question if scientists were looking into chemical bonding processes that could convert the CO2 into longer chain molecules as a less problematic and lower energy approach to sequestration. It appears Matter has answered my question at least partially in that he demonstrates such a chemical process. More encouraging is that the process relies on plentiful and naturally occurring deposits of basalts.
The second part of my question was the energy efficiency involved in the process. How does the overall energy (and therefore cost) required to covert the CO2 into calcite or dolomite (and possibly other anhydrous carbonates) compared to existing proposals for compression and subsurface storage of raw CO2?
Sorry, I confused the question. Better worded, how does the cost of using basalt to store CO2 as precipitates compare to the more widely proposed methods of storing raw compressed CO2 under ground?
I am glad you found my picture interesting for your article.
And I am even more glad to see it associated to such an interesting initiative, that I hope it moves fast and we can see results in the near future.
Regards !
Hey Mr. Matter: FYI a group scientist introdeuced “The Fudge Factor” to their GW readings.
An extremely expensive waste of time. This will double the cost of electricity and will have no benefit at all.
In fact, there is reason to believe that there has been no significant rise in CO2 at all in the last 150 years. Check out this link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091230184221.htm
Remeber: \\\”Figures don\\\’t lie, but liars figure.\\\” (Mark Twain, I believe)
There is no agw. None.
You misunderstood that article. It does not say there has been no rise in CO2, it says that the ratio, the fraction of CO2 in the atmosphere, to the CO2 absorbed in the oceans, has not changed. The fraction can remain unchanged if both rise together. Pretty simple concept to grasp, if you want to. And the same article rebuts the claim that you wanted to make posting in another area, where you claimed the oceans are not absorbing CO2, but are rather releasing it. Thanks for the link.
Benjamin,
The real significance of this study is that a basic premise of the GCM models were assumed incorrectly. AGW theory holds that as CO2 levels increase, the ability for CO2 sinks to buffer (absorb) the CO2 diminishes. This study refutes that premise. Based on observational data (not models), there has been no decrease in the CO2 sink uptake as predicted – it has kept pace linearly to the extent that the fraction of CO2 sink capacity vs. CO2 atmospheric concentration has not changed over the study period covering the past 150 years. This is important because the current GCM models followed the AGW theoretical assumption. That isn’t happening so the models are making a wrong assumption in forecasting this mechanism. This leads to a warm bias in their predictions.
While this seems to come as a surprise to modelers, I’m not all that surprised this was discovered. CO2 absorption follows some fairly basic molecular laws. As CO2 concentration increases in the atmosphere, the kinetic pressure (or diffusion) balance between the atmosphere and the sinks causes the sinks to increase their uptake of CO2 to equalize the imbalance. As CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere increase, so does the absorption capacity of the sinks. This study demonstrates that the laws of kinetic molecular theory operate well in our chaotic climate system (as they should). The models need to be updated to take this into account.
Quite right, Hank…and plant life responds favorably to the increase in CO2 (not just the geochemical processes like carbfix), as any greenhouse operator will confirm. The increased partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere will tend to drive the reaction to sequester more CO2 (same as you said but in different terms).
No small wonder Mr. Matter would like to see us all license his process…he would become quite wealthy in that case. I also would like to see how much energy it takes to drive his sequestration setup…like using ethanol for a motor fuel, it may well take more fuel (and produce more carbon than it’s worth)…the interview seems conveniently silent on this point.
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Since every scientist knows that water vapor is potent greenhouse gas as compared to C02 then it would make se3nse to sequester water to prevent the formation of water vapor!