Carbon Capture and Storage

As an idea Carbon Capture and Storage looks like a great idea. After all no matter what people think about climate change, stopping the pollution from power generation has to be a good thing. The problem is that the only system that can be effectively used on existing plants means that the exhaust gasses have to be passed through solvents. Therefore there are different types of pollution created. Additionally, while this system is the most effective, it is also the most expensive.

This method of carbon capture does work on a laboratory scale, and even on small (micro) power generation plants, when scaled up to the size of power generation that really exists it fails to capture the volume of CO2 that would be needed to really reduce the carbon dioxide going into the environment. However just as sulphur scrubbers were eventually retrofitted to power generation, it is likely that eventually this will be made to work.

However the other aspect of this system is the storage. Going back to basic school room science, Carbon dioxide is a compound that has no liquid state it goes from a gas to a solid. Except when a catalyst is added or the gas is placed under pressure. Therefore the technical difficulties are quite large right from the start.

Yet in America, the Oil industry has been using CO2, captured from power plants, to help extract the last vestiges of oil from wells for years, therefore the science is not completely new and there are aspects that are tried and tested, relatively speaking. As the oil industry never developed this technology to alleviate carbon pollution but to extract every last cent of oil out of the ground.

This is where the real problem with carbon storage lays. When an oil well is drilled, the oil baring rocks, shale's normally, are saturated in the hydrocarbons and when extracted there is not some vast cavern left as the oil was in the pours of the rocks. Therefore sequestrating the carbon dioxide means pumping it in as a liquid under pressure. But just as when a CO2 extinguisher is used and the expansion of the gas cools it, the same principal applies. Therefore the act of pumping the liquefied CO2 into the rocks causes it to freeze and form dry ice. While this would slowly thaw and release the CO2 into the rocks, behind that ball of ice is more liquefied carbon dioxide at fifteen atmospheres.

That freezing and warming of the rocks will fracture and weaken the rocks, making leaks of the Carbon Dioxide more likely. This then raises another doubt regarding this as yet not fully developed technology. That of ensuring the greenhouse gases stay where they have been put.

Even if the carbon capture technology can be made to work, and it is likely it will, the storage sites will need to be monitored for thousands of years. Who pays? Who will do the monitoring? Even if we leave it up to the energy companies eventually it will be tax payers and governments who will have to do the work.

I can see a situation arising when a government wants to cut budgets and the funding for the monitoring gets cut. Just using the North Sea oil fields as an example, a bad winter storm could damage the technology and billions of tons of CO2 could be released in days.

The problem is that there is to much hope being placed upon technologies that have not been invented and systems that have not been created to solve climate change. I am not saying that Carbon capture and Storage will not work, but nor should we allow ourselves to be fooled that this is some easy solution. There is a risk that politicians and vested interests delude us that this is the solution.