Re: [geo] Re: Deep ocean disposal
Andrew The deep ocean seal I am postulating is a liquid with low miscibility with both CO2 and sea water and a density between them. It should self heal if punctured but could have quite a high viscosity. Whether or not it will work depends only on current velocities. We need to know what these are wherever the depth exceeds 700 metres and then see if such a magic liquid exists. My guess is that it might work if the deep water velocity was below 5 cm per second but we can test for this in small tanks in the lab. I know that lots of places have velocities well above this but perhaps not all. Like I said we can be picky about the places we choose. Undisturbed ooze might be a good indicator. I would rather have a small but defined leakage than something we thought was perfect but which then suddenly failed, hence the need for self healing. Can you tell me any more about what was said at The Royal Society and which date it was? Did anyone mention liquid sealing layers? Stephen Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design Institute for Energy Systems School of Engineering Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh EH9 3JL Scotland Tel +44 131 650 5704 Mobile 07795 203 195 www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs On 02/06/2011 20:37, Andrew Lockley wrote: It's not that simple. This issue was covered at the royal society. If reserves are deep enough, they will be kept stable by pressure. As long as they're not perturbed and don't diffuse into anything, you should be ok. If you're relying on pressure containment, then fracking is a problem. However, the pressure reservoir is unstable anyway so why use it. Use a deep saline aquifer instead. I don't trust deep ocean disposal as there's no seal. The ocean is too dynamic to mess with in this way. Doesn't pass the gut feel test. Maybe that's voodoo engineering, but it's served me pretty well. Only useful as an emergency option, but the storage isn't the hard bit, as I see it. A On 2 Jun 2011 20:18, Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com mailto:joshuahorton...@gmail.com wrote: Michael writes in an earlier email that These are the same oil fields that are being proposed for massive CO2 geological storage. Fracking is rapidly taking that option off the table. I know a little about CCS but not much about fracking - if this is a zero-sum game then we've got a problem. Oil/gas, coal, and power plants do not neatly overlap, so if fracking comes at the expense of CCS, we could see conflicting interests within the broader resource extraction industry. Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com mailto:joshuahorton...@gmail.com On Jun 2, 1:10 pm, Stephen Salter s.sal...@ed.ac.uk mailto:s.sal...@ed.ac.uk wrote: Mike We could be picky about our trenches. We do not have to be all that deep, only about 700 metres. Stephen Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design Institute for Energy Systems School of Engineering Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh EH9 3JL Scotland Tel +44 131 650 5704 Mobile 07795 203 195www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs http://195www.see.ed.ac.uk/%7Eshs On 02/06/2011 17:00, Mike MacCracken wrote: But aren't deep ocean trenches generally subduction zones, so subject to rather massive earthquakes, as recently occurred off Japan? Mike On 6/2/11 5:42 AM, Stephen Salter s.sal...@ed.ac.uk mailto:s.sal...@ed.ac.uk wrote: Hi All I used to think that if gas fields had not leaked their natural gas then they should not leak CO2 but I can now see that this argument would be changed by fracking. However if the pressure is high enough the density of CO2 is higher than that of sea water. If you fill a deep sea depression with it and then cover the CO2 puddle with a material which prevents or greatly slows diffusion of CO2 to the sea water then most of it should stay put. The cover could be a layer of liquid with a density intermediate between the CO2 and sea water and very low miscibility with both. This would allow it to self repair. We could also stab pipes through it to add more CO2 of to release some in order to offset Lowell Wood's overdue ice age. We need to look for deep depressions close to where CO2 is being produce or could be concentrated. I did suggest this in a previous contribution to the blog quite a while ago but I think that it sank without trace. This is what we want for the CO2. Stephen Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design Institute for Energy Systems School of Engineering Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh EH9 3JL Scotland Tel +44 131 650 5704 Mobile 07795 203 195 www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/%7Eshshttp://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/%7Eshs http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/%7Eshs On 01/06/2011 21:35, Gregory Benford wrote: Michael raises the crucial issue:
Re: [geo] Re: Deep ocean disposal
royalsociety.org/events/Bakerian2011/ From memory ocean storage was pretty safe in theory. Co2 and water dissolve together to create a mixture more dense than either. The demo was pretty cool but I'm on my phone so I can't check if the video is still up. You can pester the lecturer for a YouTube video if you like What about earthquake, flood basalt, dissolution into subducting rock, etc? All a bit unstable and complex for my liking, those great lakes of co2 sitting down there. Plus, won't it turn marine snow into methane? A On 3 Jun 2011 12:52, Stephen Salter s.sal...@ed.ac.uk wrote: Andrew The deep ocean seal I am postulating is a liquid with low miscibility with both CO2 and sea water and a density between them. It should self heal if punctured but could have quite a high viscosity. Whether or not it will work depends only on current velocities. We need to know what these are wherever the depth exceeds 700 metres and then see if such a magic liquid exists. My guess is that it might work if the deep water velocity was below 5 cm per second but we can test for this in small tanks in the lab. I know that lots of places have velocities well above this but perhaps not all. Like I said we can be picky about the places we choose. Undisturbed ooze might be a good indicator. I would rather have a small but defined leakage than something we thought was perfect but which then suddenly failed, hence the need for self healing. Can you tell me any more about what was said at The Royal Society and which date it was? Did anyone mention liquid sealing layers? Stephen Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design Institute for Energy Systems School of Engineering Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh EH9 3JL Scotland Tel +44 131 650 5704 Mobile 07795 203 195 www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs On 02/06/2011 20:37, Andrew Lockley wrote: It's not that simple. This issue was covered at the royal society. If reserves are deep enough, they will be kept stable by pressure. As long as they're not perturbed and don't diffuse into anything, you should be ok. If you're relying on pressure containment, then fracking is a problem. However, the pressure reservoir is unstable anyway so why use it. Use a deep saline aquifer instead. I don't trust deep ocean disposal as there's no seal. The ocean is too dynamic to mess with in this way. Doesn't pass the gut feel test. Maybe that's voodoo engineering, but it's served me pretty well. Only useful as an emergency option, but the storage isn't the hard bit, as I see it. A On 2 Jun 2011 20:18, Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com mailto:joshuahorton...@gmail.com wrote: Michael writes in an earlier email that These are the same oil fields that are being proposed for massive CO2 geological storage. Fracking is rapidly taking that option off the table. I know a little about CCS but not much about fracking - if this is a zero-sum game then we've got a problem. Oil/gas, coal, and power plants do not neatly overlap, so if fracking comes at the expense of CCS, we could see conflicting interests within the broader resource extraction industry. Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com mailto:joshuahorton...@gmail.com On Jun 2, 1:10 pm, Stephen Salter s.sal...@ed.ac.uk mailto:s.sal...@ed.ac.uk wrote: Mike We could be picky about our trenches. We do not have to be all that deep, only about 700 metres. Stephen Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design Institute for Energy Systems School of Engineering Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh EH9 3JL Scotland Tel +44 131 650 5704 Mobile 07795 203 195www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs http://195www.see.ed.ac.uk/%7Eshs On 02/06/2011 17:00, Mike MacCracken wrote: But aren't deep ocean trenches generally subduction zones, so subject to rather massive earthquakes, as recently occurred off Japan? Mike On 6/2/11 5:42 AM, Stephen Salter s.sal...@ed.ac.uk mailto:s.sal...@ed.ac.uk wrote: Hi All I used to think that if gas fields had not leaked their natural gas then they should not leak CO2 but I can now see that this argument would be changed by fracking. However if the pressure is high enough the density of CO2 is higher than that of sea water. If you fill a deep sea depression with it and then cover the CO2 puddle with a material which prevents or greatly slows diffusion of CO2 to the sea water then most of it should stay put. The cover could be a layer of liquid with a density intermediate between the CO2 and sea water and very low miscibility with both. This would allow it to self repair. We could also stab pipes through it to add more CO2 of to release some in order to offset Lowell Wood's overdue ice age. We need to look for deep depressions close to where CO2 is being produce or could be concentrated. I did suggest this in a previous contribution to the blog quite a while ago but I think that
Re: [geo] Re: Deep ocean disposal
People have thought about liquid sealing layers before for CO2 lakes on the bottom of the ocean, and I think the problem is that nobody has come up with the right substance. It needs to be: 1. between the density of seawater and liquid CO2 which is a pretty narrow density range. 2. relatively unreactive so can remain in place thousands of years. 3. relatively impermeable to both seawater and CO2. The good news is that the sealant need not be that cheap if you can make the lakes deep enough. If a CO2-lake is, say, 100 m deep, even at $30/tonCO2, this is $3000 worth of CO2 per m2, so even if this seal cost $300 per m2, it would only add 10% to cost of disposal. On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 5:01 AM, Andrew Lockley andrew.lock...@gmail.comwrote: royalsociety.org/events/Bakerian2011/ From memory ocean storage was pretty safe in theory. Co2 and water dissolve together to create a mixture more dense than either. The demo was pretty cool but I'm on my phone so I can't check if the video is still up. You can pester the lecturer for a YouTube video if you like What about earthquake, flood basalt, dissolution into subducting rock, etc? All a bit unstable and complex for my liking, those great lakes of co2 sitting down there. Plus, won't it turn marine snow into methane? A On 3 Jun 2011 12:52, Stephen Salter s.sal...@ed.ac.uk wrote: Andrew The deep ocean seal I am postulating is a liquid with low miscibility with both CO2 and sea water and a density between them. It should self heal if punctured but could have quite a high viscosity. Whether or not it will work depends only on current velocities. We need to know what these are wherever the depth exceeds 700 metres and then see if such a magic liquid exists. My guess is that it might work if the deep water velocity was below 5 cm per second but we can test for this in small tanks in the lab. I know that lots of places have velocities well above this but perhaps not all. Like I said we can be picky about the places we choose. Undisturbed ooze might be a good indicator. I would rather have a small but defined leakage than something we thought was perfect but which then suddenly failed, hence the need for self healing. Can you tell me any more about what was said at The Royal Society and which date it was? Did anyone mention liquid sealing layers? Stephen Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design Institute for Energy Systems School of Engineering Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh EH9 3JL Scotland Tel +44 131 650 5704 Mobile 07795 203 195 www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs On 02/06/2011 20:37, Andrew Lockley wrote: It's not that simple. This issue was covered at the royal society. If reserves are deep enough, they will be kept stable by pressure. As long as they're not perturbed and don't diffuse into anything, you should be ok. If you're relying on pressure containment, then fracking is a problem. However, the pressure reservoir is unstable anyway so why use it. Use a deep saline aquifer instead. I don't trust deep ocean disposal as there's no seal. The ocean is too dynamic to mess with in this way. Doesn't pass the gut feel test. Maybe that's voodoo engineering, but it's served me pretty well. Only useful as an emergency option, but the storage isn't the hard bit, as I see it. A On 2 Jun 2011 20:18, Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com mailto:joshuahorton...@gmail.com wrote: Michael writes in an earlier email that These are the same oil fields that are being proposed for massive CO2 geological storage. Fracking is rapidly taking that option off the table. I know a little about CCS but not much about fracking - if this is a zero-sum game then we've got a problem. Oil/gas, coal, and power plants do not neatly overlap, so if fracking comes at the expense of CCS, we could see conflicting interests within the broader resource extraction industry. Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com mailto:joshuahorton...@gmail.com On Jun 2, 1:10 pm, Stephen Salter s.sal...@ed.ac.uk mailto:s.sal...@ed.ac.uk wrote: Mike We could be picky about our trenches. We do not have to be all that deep, only about 700 metres. Stephen Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design Institute for Energy Systems School of Engineering Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh EH9 3JL Scotland Tel +44 131 650 5704 Mobile 07795 203 195www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs http://195www.see.ed.ac.uk/%7Eshs On 02/06/2011 17:00, Mike MacCracken wrote: But aren't deep ocean trenches generally subduction zones, so subject to rather massive earthquakes, as recently occurred off Japan? Mike On 6/2/11 5:42 AM, Stephen Salter s.sal...@ed.ac.uk mailto:s.sal...@ed.ac.uk wrote: Hi All I used to think that if gas fields had not leaked their natural gas then they should not leak CO2 but I
[geo] Re: Deep ocean disposal
What with Mike's mentioning the recent earthquake off of Japan, are folks on this list aware that the first real-world methane hydrate mining project, funded by the Japanese government, was set to begin about a month before the quake/tsunami, in the Nankai trough, not all that far away, and run by none other than Tepco?.Anyone here know more about it, any endogenous seismicity issues, landslides, etc? Cheers, N On Jun 3, 8:01 am, Andrew Lockley andrew.lock...@gmail.com wrote: royalsociety.org/events/Bakerian2011/ From memory ocean storage was pretty safe in theory. Co2 and water dissolve together to create a mixture more dense than either. The demo was pretty cool but I'm on my phone so I can't check if the video is still up. You can pester the lecturer for a YouTube video if you like What about earthquake, flood basalt, dissolution into subducting rock, etc? All a bit unstable and complex for my liking, those great lakes of co2 sitting down there. Plus, won't it turn marine snow into methane? A On 3 Jun 2011 12:52, Stephen Salter s.sal...@ed.ac.uk wrote: Andrew The deep ocean seal I am postulating is a liquid with low miscibility with both CO2 and sea water and a density between them. It should self heal if punctured but could have quite a high viscosity. Whether or not it will work depends only on current velocities. We need to know what these are wherever the depth exceeds 700 metres and then see if such a magic liquid exists. My guess is that it might work if the deep water velocity was below 5 cm per second but we can test for this in small tanks in the lab. I know that lots of places have velocities well above this but perhaps not all. Like I said we can be picky about the places we choose. Undisturbed ooze might be a good indicator. I would rather have a small but defined leakage than something we thought was perfect but which then suddenly failed, hence the need for self healing. Can you tell me any more about what was said at The Royal Society and which date it was? Did anyone mention liquid sealing layers? Stephen Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design Institute for Energy Systems School of Engineering Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh EH9 3JL Scotland Tel +44 131 650 5704 Mobile 07795 203 195 www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs On 02/06/2011 20:37, Andrew Lockley wrote: It's not that simple. This issue was covered at the royal society. If reserves are deep enough, they will be kept stable by pressure. As long as they're not perturbed and don't diffuse into anything, you should be ok. If you're relying on pressure containment, then fracking is a problem. However, the pressure reservoir is unstable anyway so why use it. Use a deep saline aquifer instead. I don't trust deep ocean disposal as there's no seal. The ocean is too dynamic to mess with in this way. Doesn't pass the gut feel test. Maybe that's voodoo engineering, but it's served me pretty well. Only useful as an emergency option, but the storage isn't the hard bit, as I see it. A On 2 Jun 2011 20:18, Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com mailto:joshuahorton...@gmail.com wrote: Michael writes in an earlier email that These are the same oil fields that are being proposed for massive CO2 geological storage. Fracking is rapidly taking that option off the table. I know a little about CCS but not much about fracking - if this is a zero-sum game then we've got a problem. Oil/gas, coal, and power plants do not neatly overlap, so if fracking comes at the expense of CCS, we could see conflicting interests within the broader resource extraction industry. Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com mailto:joshuahorton...@gmail.com On Jun 2, 1:10 pm, Stephen Salter s.sal...@ed.ac.uk mailto:s.sal...@ed.ac.uk wrote: Mike We could be picky about our trenches. We do not have to be all that deep, only about 700 metres. Stephen Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design Institute for Energy Systems School of Engineering Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh EH9 3JL Scotland Tel +44 131 650 5704 Mobile 07795 203 195www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs http://195www.see.ed.ac.uk/%7Eshs On 02/06/2011 17:00, Mike MacCracken wrote: But aren't deep ocean trenches generally subduction zones, so subject to rather massive earthquakes, as recently occurred off Japan? Mike On 6/2/11 5:42 AM, Stephen Salter s.sal...@ed.ac.uk mailto:s.sal...@ed.ac.uk wrote: Hi All I used to think that if gas fields had not leaked their natural gas then they should not leak CO2 but I can now see that this argument would be changed by fracking. However if the pressure is high enough the density of CO2 is higher than that of sea water. If you fill a deep sea depression with it and then cover the CO2 puddle with a material which prevents or greatly slows diffusion of CO2
Re: [geo] Re: Deep ocean disposal
Unclear how a discussion of methane and fracking got diverted to deep sea CO2 lakes, but if you are suggesting that CCS-captured CO2 be stored as pools in the deep ocean (discussed at some length in Ken’s IPCC chapter: http://www.ipcc-wg3.de/publications/special-reports/.files-images/SRCCS-Chapter6.pdf), this seems unlikely to happen any time soon due the high cost of purifying and transporting the CO2. Even more costly if you are talking about this for air CO2: http://www.aps.org/policy/reports/popa-reports/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfilePageID=244407 Another option is CO2 emulsion: http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/05/carbon-seq/Tech%20Session%20Paper%20206.pdf But If you are serious about abiotic, ocean C storage, it’s much easier, cheaper, and safer to convert point-source or air CO2 to ocean alkalinity and store in the water column where it might even help mitigate ocean acidification: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es102671x http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es800366q No? -Greg On 6/3/11 8:26 AM, kcaldeira-carnegie.stanford.edu kcalde...@carnegie.stanford.edu wrote: People have thought about liquid sealing layers before for CO2 lakes on the bottom of the ocean, and I think the problem is that nobody has come up with the right substance. It needs to be: 1. between the density of seawater and liquid CO2 which is a pretty narrow density range. 2. relatively unreactive so can remain in place thousands of years. 3. relatively impermeable to both seawater and CO2. The good news is that the sealant need not be that cheap if you can make the lakes deep enough. If a CO2-lake is, say, 100 m deep, even at $30/tonCO2, this is $3000 worth of CO2 per m2, so even if this seal cost $300 per m2, it would only add 10% to cost of disposal. On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 5:01 AM, Andrew Lockley andrew.lock...@gmail.com wrote: royalsociety.org/events/Bakerian2011/ http://royalsociety.org/events/Bakerian2011/ From memory ocean storage was pretty safe in theory. Co2 and water dissolve together to create a mixture more dense than either. The demo was pretty cool but I'm on my phone so I can't check if the video is still up. You can pester the lecturer for a YouTube video if you like What about earthquake, flood basalt, dissolution into subducting rock, etc? All a bit unstable and complex for my liking, those great lakes of co2 sitting down there. Plus, won't it turn marine snow into methane? A On 3 Jun 2011 12:52, Stephen Salter s.sal...@ed.ac.uk wrote: Andrew The deep ocean seal I am postulating is a liquid with low miscibility with both CO2 and sea water and a density between them. It should self heal if punctured but could have quite a high viscosity. Whether or not it will work depends only on current velocities. We need to know what these are wherever the depth exceeds 700 metres and then see if such a magic liquid exists. My guess is that it might work if the deep water velocity was below 5 cm per second but we can test for this in small tanks in the lab. I know that lots of places have velocities well above this but perhaps not all. Like I said we can be picky about the places we choose. Undisturbed ooze might be a good indicator. I would rather have a small but defined leakage than something we thought was perfect but which then suddenly failed, hence the need for self healing. Can you tell me any more about what was said at The Royal Society and which date it was? Did anyone mention liquid sealing layers? Stephen Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design Institute for Energy Systems School of Engineering Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh EH9 3JL Scotland Tel +44 131 650 5704 tel:%2B44%20131%20650%205704 Mobile 07795 203 195 tel:07795%20203%20195 www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs On 02/06/2011 20:37, Andrew Lockley wrote: It's not that simple. This issue was covered at the royal society. If reserves are deep enough, they will be kept stable by pressure. As long as they're not perturbed and don't diffuse into anything, you should be ok. If you're relying on pressure containment, then fracking is a problem. However, the pressure reservoir is unstable anyway so why use it. Use a deep saline aquifer instead. I don't trust deep ocean disposal as there's no seal. The ocean is too dynamic to mess with in this way. Doesn't pass the gut feel test. Maybe that's voodoo engineering, but it's served me pretty well. Only useful as an emergency option, but the storage isn't the hard bit, as I see it. A On 2 Jun 2011 20:18, Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com mailto:joshuahorton...@gmail.com wrote: Michael writes in an earlier email that These are the same oil fields that are being proposed for massive CO2 geological storage. Fracking is rapidly taking that option off the table. I know a little about CCS but not much about fracking - if this is a zero-sum game then we've got a
[geo] Re: Deep ocean disposal
Michael writes in an earlier email that These are the same oil fields that are being proposed for massive CO2 geological storage. Fracking is rapidly taking that option off the table. I know a little about CCS but not much about fracking - if this is a zero-sum game then we've got a problem. Oil/gas, coal, and power plants do not neatly overlap, so if fracking comes at the expense of CCS, we could see conflicting interests within the broader resource extraction industry. Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com On Jun 2, 1:10 pm, Stephen Salter s.sal...@ed.ac.uk wrote: Mike We could be picky about our trenches. We do not have to be all that deep, only about 700 metres. Stephen Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design Institute for Energy Systems School of Engineering Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh EH9 3JL Scotland Tel +44 131 650 5704 Mobile 07795 203 195www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs On 02/06/2011 17:00, Mike MacCracken wrote: But aren't deep ocean trenches generally subduction zones, so subject to rather massive earthquakes, as recently occurred off Japan? Mike On 6/2/11 5:42 AM, Stephen Salter s.sal...@ed.ac.uk wrote: Hi All I used to think that if gas fields had not leaked their natural gas then they should not leak CO2 but I can now see that this argument would be changed by fracking. However if the pressure is high enough the density of CO2 is higher than that of sea water. If you fill a deep sea depression with it and then cover the CO2 puddle with a material which prevents or greatly slows diffusion of CO2 to the sea water then most of it should stay put. The cover could be a layer of liquid with a density intermediate between the CO2 and sea water and very low miscibility with both. This would allow it to self repair. We could also stab pipes through it to add more CO2 of to release some in order to offset Lowell Wood's overdue ice age. We need to look for deep depressions close to where CO2 is being produce or could be concentrated. I did suggest this in a previous contribution to the blog quite a while ago but I think that it sank without trace. This is what we want for the CO2. Stephen Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design Institute for Energy Systems School of Engineering Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh EH9 3JL Scotland Tel +44 131 650 5704 Mobile 07795 203 195 www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shshttp://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/%7Eshs On 01/06/2011 21:35, Gregory Benford wrote: Michael raises the crucial issue: */Should the oil and gas industry be relied upon at the geological time scale needed for massive CO2 sequestration? /*There are measurements Sherry Rowland told me about ~5 years ago, made by his group at UCI, of the methane content of air across Texas Oklahoma. /He found no difference in methane levels in cities vs oil fields and farms. / He inferred that many oil wells, including spot drillings that yielded no oil, but penetrated fairly deeply, were leaking methane into the air. No one has contradicted this. That made me forget CCS in such domes. Thus I went back to working on CROPS, where we know it takes ~1000 years to return to the atmosphere. Gregory Benford On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 1:25 PM, Michael Hayes voglerl...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Folks, After reading Greg's post, I have spent some time looking into the methane release being caused by Fracking. Here is a link to a resent film on the subject. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZe1AeH0Qz8If you are interested in the methane issue in general, I encourage you to take the time to view this film. I do realize that any media based documentary is subject to dispute and debate. However, I bring this to the group for 2 reasons. 1) These are the same oil fields that are being proposed for massive CO2 geological storage. Fracking is rapidly taking that option off the table. I have never believed oil field CO2 sequestration was practical. However, this type of information should raise profound questions about the entire concept of geological CO2 sequestration. 2) The methane release (GHG effect) from such wide spread use of this drilling method can equal all other anthropogenic GHG sources at the regional level. Fracking is a methane wild card which can not be ignored. And, oil field CO2 sequestration is in direct opposition to
Re: [geo] Re: Deep ocean disposal
It's not that simple. This issue was covered at the royal society. If reserves are deep enough, they will be kept stable by pressure. As long as they're not perturbed and don't diffuse into anything, you should be ok. If you're relying on pressure containment, then fracking is a problem. However, the pressure reservoir is unstable anyway so why use it. Use a deep saline aquifer instead. I don't trust deep ocean disposal as there's no seal. The ocean is too dynamic to mess with in this way. Doesn't pass the gut feel test. Maybe that's voodoo engineering, but it's served me pretty well. Only useful as an emergency option, but the storage isn't the hard bit, as I see it. A On 2 Jun 2011 20:18, Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com wrote: Michael writes in an earlier email that These are the same oil fields that are being proposed for massive CO2 geological storage. Fracking is rapidly taking that option off the table. I know a little about CCS but not much about fracking - if this is a zero-sum game then we've got a problem. Oil/gas, coal, and power plants do not neatly overlap, so if fracking comes at the expense of CCS, we could see conflicting interests within the broader resource extraction industry. Josh Horton joshuahorton...@gmail.com On Jun 2, 1:10 pm, Stephen Salter s.sal...@ed.ac.uk wrote: Mike We could be picky about our trenches. We do not have to be all that deep, only about 700 metres. Stephen Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design Institute for Energy Systems School of Engineering Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh EH9 3JL Scotland Tel +44 131 650 5704 Mobile 07795 203 195www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs On 02/06/2011 17:00, Mike MacCracken wrote: But aren't deep ocean trenches generally subduction zones, so subject to rather massive earthquakes, as recently occurred off Japan? Mike On 6/2/11 5:42 AM, Stephen Salter s.sal...@ed.ac.uk wrote: Hi All I used to think that if gas fields had not leaked their natural gas then they should not leak CO2 but I can now see that this argument would be changed by fracking. However if the pressure is high enough the density of CO2 is higher than that of sea water. If you fill a deep sea depression with it and then cover the CO2 puddle with a material which prevents or greatly slows diffusion of CO2 to the sea water then most of it should stay put. The cover could be a layer of liquid with a density intermediate between the CO2 and sea water and very low miscibility with both. This would allow it to self repair. We could also stab pipes through it to add more CO2 of to release some in order to offset Lowell Wood's overdue ice age. We need to look for deep depressions close to where CO2 is being produce or could be concentrated. I did suggest this in a previous contribution to the blog quite a while ago but I think that it sank without trace. This is what we want for the CO2. Stephen Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design Institute for Energy Systems School of Engineering Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh EH9 3JL Scotland Tel +44 131 650 5704 Mobile 07795 203 195 www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shshttp://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/%7Eshs On 01/06/2011 21:35, Gregory Benford wrote: Michael raises the crucial issue: */Should the oil and gas industry be relied upon at the geological time scale needed for massive CO2 sequestration? /*There are measurements Sherry Rowland told me about ~5 years ago, made by his group at UCI, of the methane content of air across Texas Oklahoma. /He found no difference in methane levels in cities vs oil fields and farms. / He inferred that many oil wells, including spot drillings that yielded no oil, but penetrated fairly deeply, were leaking methane into the air. No one has contradicted this. That made me forget CCS in such domes. Thus I went back to working on CROPS, where we know it takes ~1000 years to return to the atmosphere. Gregory Benford On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 1:25 PM, Michael Hayes voglerl...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Folks, After reading Greg's post, I have spent some time looking into the methane release being caused by Fracking. Here is a link to a resent film on the subject. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZe1AeH0Qz8If you are interested in the methane issue in general, I encourage you to take the time to view this film. I do realize that any media based documentary is subject to dispute and debate. However, I bring this to the group for 2 reasons. 1) These