But a talk at the AGU Chapman Conference today by palaeoclimatologist Lowell Stott of the University of Southern California suggests a radically different reservoir: pools
of liquid carbon dioxide trapped in seafloor hydrothermal vents.
By 2050, the volume
of liquid carbon dioxide that must be injected underground for permanent storage each year would be three times the annual amount of petroleum we currently use (85 million barrels).
The discovery of a vast lake
of liquid carbon dioxide beneath the ocean floor off Taiwan has startled earth scientists and raised hopes for a new strategy against carbon dioxide — related global warming.
Not exact matches
«The findings showed no mineralogical evidence for abundant
liquid water or its by - products, thus pointing to mechanisms other than the flow
of water — such as the freeze and thaw
of carbon dioxide frost — as being the major drivers
of recent gully evolution,» the team explained in the press release.
With CCS, instead
of releasing
carbon dioxide from oil and gas operations into the atmosphere, where the emissions contribute to global warming, that CO2 is converted into
liquid and pumped underground to be sequestered indefinitely in porous rock formations.
Prior to joining IQT, Kyle was CEO and co-founder
of Liquid Light (acquired 2016), a company developing technology to make materials from
carbon dioxide.
The cultures ferment the
liquid of choice, meaning that the bacteria and yeasts will digest the sugar, creating lactic acid, ethanol, and
carbon dioxide in the process (source).
One approach that is gaining currency among environmental scientists is
carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS), a form
of carbon sequestration in which CO2 is removed from the waste gas
of power plants, typically by absorbing it in a
liquid, and subsequently burying it deep underground, hence keeping the gas out
of the atmosphere.
«Pore volume that you can use to hold CO2 is a new natural resource,» Friedmann says
of the underground reserves that might be suitable to contain
liquid carbon dioxide.
Like the
carbon dioxide in a fizzing glass
of soda, most bubbles
of gas in a
liquid don't last long.
Two potential scenarios: gas seeping from the
liquid solution, like
carbon dioxide escaping from an open soda can, and a pressure difference caused by the slow freezing
of liquids.
Their abundant presence on this peak may be tied to the
liquid carbon dioxide spewed by the volcano's hydrothermal vents, which kills virtually all life in the deeper reaches
of the crater.
The second uses various forms
of chemistry — in the form
of amine or ammonia scrubbers, special membranes or ionic
liquids — to pull
carbon dioxide out
of a more mixed set
of exhaust gases.
And since 2004 oil giant BP and its partners (including Statoil) in the In Salah gas field in Algeria have been stripping the nine billion cubic meters
of natural gas produced there annually
of the 10 percent
carbon dioxide it contains and pumping a million metric tons
of liquid CO2 back into the underlying saline aquifer through three additional wells.
A team
of University
of Texas at Arlington chemists and engineers have proven that concentrated light, heat and high pressures can drive the one - step conversion
of carbon dioxide and water directly into useable
liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
In an article published today in the Proceedings
of the National Academy
of Sciences titled «Solar photothermochemical alkane reverse combustion,» the researchers demonstrate that the one - step conversion
of carbon dioxide and water into
liquid hydrocarbons and oxygen can be achieved in a photothermochemical flow reactor operating at 180 to 200 C and pressures up to 6 atmospheres.
«We are the first to use both light and heat to synthesize
liquid hydrocarbons in a single stage reactor from
carbon dioxide and water,» said Brian Dennis, UTA professor
of mechanical and aerospace engineering and co-principal investigator
of the project.
Photosynthetic chromatophores are bubbles
of liquid that form on the membranes
of bacteria that harness sunlight,
carbon dioxide and water to produce the energy needed for respiration and other functions.
CCS turns
carbon dioxide into a
liquid form
of carbon, which oil and coal extraction companies then pump into underground geological formations and wells and cap; millions
of tons
of carbon are already being stored this way each year.
Liquid CO2: Most
of us know
carbon dioxide as a gas (we exhale it) or a solid (think: dry ice in fog machines).
Supercritical
carbon dioxide has a density like that
of a
liquid, but its viscosity and diffusivity are similar to those
of a gas.
Moreover, finding a self - contained lake
of carbon dioxide at a relatively shallow 4,600 feet below sea level «is highly suggestive that if you went down a further 4,900 feet you could actually inject
liquid CO2 and it would be quite stable,» says Ken Nealson, a geobiologist at the University
of Southern California.
One
of them is obtaining insurance coverage, because insurers are concerned about the long - term financial risks
of storing
carbon dioxide in a gaseous or
liquid form underground, which include the possibility
of leakage.
Power plants could, they argue, pump the
carbon dioxide through water or other
liquids and produce a flow
of electrons — and therefore more electricity.
The newest method, patented by UA and Dr. Jason E. Bara, assistant professor
of chemical and biological engineering, uses a form
of liquid salt that could be swapped with chemicals currently used to scrub harmful emissions, such as
carbon dioxide, or CO2, from industrial emissions.
Small amounts
of the fluid and
liquid carbon dioxide are injected into the test cell, then pressure and temperature are adjusted to match the conditions
of the underground geothermal reservoirs.
Increased
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere boosts, by gas -
liquid equilibrium, the amount
of carbonic acid in the ocean, which in turn lowers the marine pH level.
«Power - to -
liquid: 200 liters
of fuel from solar power and the air's
carbon dioxide: Pilot plant produces first synthetic fuel from solar power and the air's
carbon dioxide / KIT spin - off ineratec supplied key component.»
Once FutureGen is up and running — now scheduled to happen in 2014 — the
carbon dioxide gas it produces will be siphoned off, compressed into a near -
liquid state, and piped at least a mile down into porous sandstone capped by a layer
of impermeable shale.
In a June 2016 issue
of Science, Daniel G. Nocera and Pamela A. Silver, both at Harvard University, and their colleagues reported on an approach to making
liquid fuel (specifically fusel alcohols) that far exceeds a natural leaf's conversion
of carbon dioxide to carbohydrates.
JBEI scientists have shown that adding
carbon dioxide gas during the deconstruction phase
of biofuel production successfully neutralized the toxicity
of ionic
liquids.
Biofuels Digest covered how JBEI researchers have demonstrated that adding
carbon dioxide (CO2) gas during the deconstruction phase
of biofuel production successfully neutralized the toxicity
of ionic
liquids.
«We were studying agostic bonds in a project to make
liquid fuels like methanol from
carbon dioxide to replace fuels we get from oil,» said chemist Morris Bullock at the Department
of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
The center conducts research on the production
of liquid transportation fuels via artificial photosynthesis, which utilizes solar energy, water and
carbon dioxide, DOE said Tuesday.
Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School
of Engineering and Applied Science led by Dr. James Liao have developed a more efficient way to turn methanol into useful chemicals, such as
liquid fuels, and that would also reduce
carbon dioxide emissions.
Dr. Aaron Appel, who is leading the efforts to rationally design catalysts for
carbon dioxide conversion PNNL's Institute for Integrated Catalysis, shared his team's work on two groups
of catalysts that are involved in the first step
of turning
carbon dioxide into
liquid transportation fuels.
These
carbon dioxide molecules can become part
of new gases,
liquids or solids.
Research in this area seeks to make use
of natural
carbon fixation enzymes as well as engineered pathways to more efficiently transform
carbon dioxide into stable
liquids or solids suitable for long - term storage.
Coaxed out
of the
carbon dioxide liquid, even at the low concentrations
of 1 water molecule for every 10,000
carbon dioxides, the water forms an extremely thin layer around the target mineral, in this case, anorthite.
The orbiter has found further evidence that Mars was once wetter than it is now, with observations
of surface patterns that could only have been made by flowing
liquid, most likely
carbon dioxide or water, in its recent geological past.
In an artificial photosynthetic system, the oxidation
of water molecules into oxygen, electrons and protons (hydrogen ions) provides the electrons needed to produce
liquid fuels from
carbon dioxide and water.
This orbits places the planet near the inner edge
of its host star's habitable zone, where
liquid water could exist in
liquid form under favorable conditions such as an albedo
of 0.52 with an orbital eccentricity
of 0.11 and more than 52 percent cloud cover under a sufficiently dense atmosphere
of water,
carbon dioxide, and molecular nitrogen like Earth's (ESO science release; Pepe et al, 2011; and Kaltenegger et al, 2011 — more below).
Heterogeneous catalysis for controlling gaseous emissions from automotive and stationary engines, alternative energy using catalytic reforming
of gaseous and
liquid fuels to hydrogen for fuel cells, catalytic processes for upgrading
carbon dioxide to useful products
Four and a half billion years after its birth, the shrouded planet is much too hot to support the presence
of liquid water on its surface because
of its dense
carbon dioxide atmosphere and sulfuric acid clouds, which retain too much radiative heat from the Sun through a runaway greenhouse effect.
The cups
of liquid in a sponge that are called Mosquito Cognito put a scent in the air that causes all biting insects to be unable to smell the
carbon dioxide that a human body gives off from the skin.
A partial list
of properties surveyed includes density (expressed as API gravity), vapor pressure, initial boiling point, boiling point distribution, flash point, gas — oil ratio, «light ends» (dissolved gases — including nitrogen,
carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, methane, ethane, and propane — and butanes and other volatile
liquids) composition, and flash gas composition.
The LANL report is a proposal to use combustion products (water and
carbon dioxide are both combustion products, not sources
of chemical energy) as feedstock for synthesizing a
liquid that conveniently stores some
of the energy produced by the nuclear power source.
The energy required to convert coal to
liquid fuel doubles the amount
of carbon dioxide released compared to fuels refined from oil.
Due to the high cost
of capturing, transporting, and sequestering
carbon dioxide, EPA expects that any new coal fired power plants built in the foreseeable future will defray the costs
of CCS by selling its
carbon dioxide to oil companies, which can use the gas to help extract oil by displacing
liquid fuels deep underground, in a process known as CO2 enhanced oil recovery (or CO2 - EOR).
Water has a residence time
of 8 - 10 days in the atmosphere, so whenever it rains
carbon dioxide is being washed out
of the atmosphere, because, water (vapour,
liquid, solid) in the atmosphere attracts all
carbon dioxide in the vicinity — together forming carbonic acid which gives all natural unpolluted rain its pH
of around 5.6 - 8.