Comments on: Carbon capture http://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2008/03/12/carbon-capture/ Commentary on what interests me, reflecting my personal take on the world Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:44:32 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: Andrew W http://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2008/03/12/carbon-capture/#comment-147 Andrew W Thu, 13 Mar 2008 08:06:32 +0000 http://adamsmith.wordpress.com/?p=118#comment-147 I'm a bit sceptical of this whole concept as a solution, at one atmosphere pressure one cubic metre of coal makes about a thousand cubic metres of CO2, is the CO2 going to be seperated from the N2 that is also in the power stations exhaust? If not that five thousand cubic metres of gas (at STP) to store. Now obviously that needs to be compressed to stick it into old oil wells, but this takes energy, and quite a lot of energy to compress it to the 100+ atmospheres needed to get it under a thousand or more metres of ocean and rock. Also, with oil wells it is normal to inject water or air to keep fissures in the oil field open and to push the oil out, so these old wells aren't empty spaces underground, to get the CO2 in, something else has to come out, that something likely being very oily water. Still, I'm not a geologist - but neither is Sir Nicholas Stern. I’m a bit sceptical of this whole concept as a solution, at one atmosphere pressure one cubic metre of coal makes about a thousand cubic metres of CO2, is the CO2 going to be seperated from the N2 that is also in the power stations exhaust? If not that five thousand cubic metres of gas (at STP) to store. Now obviously that needs to be compressed to stick it into old oil wells, but this takes energy, and quite a lot of energy to compress it to the 100+ atmospheres needed to get it under a thousand or more metres of ocean and rock.
Also, with oil wells it is normal to inject water or air to keep fissures in the oil field open and to push the oil out, so these old wells aren’t empty spaces underground, to get the CO2 in, something else has to come out, that something likely being very oily water.

Still, I’m not a geologist – but neither is Sir Nicholas Stern.

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