By: lenrosen4

Tue, 22 Jul 2014 15:54:00 +0000

In reply to Al Gage.

I agree with you that we humans should be protecting natural carbon sinks as far more effective means of dealing with CO2.

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By: Al Gage

Mon, 21 Jul 2014 22:50:00 +0000

From an engineering perspective, the least bad and most cost effective way to sequester atmospheric carbon is through tropical rain forest photosynthesis. It makes no difference to the global atmosphere whether the carbon is generated and sequestered in Kentucky or whether the carbon is generated in Kentucky and sequestered in Brazil. The Amazon River dumps an average of 200,000 cubic meters/sec of fresh water into the Atlantic Ocean. All that wasted fresh water could in principle be used to grow plants and sequester carbon. All the carbon emissions in Kentucky, or for that matter all of North America, could be sequestered in Brazil’s huge tropical rainforest swamp lands. All it takes is fast growing plants, sun, rain, big bulk harvesters, and large barges to haul the organic material down river and out to sea. Huge metal nets and cable conveyers would sink the biomass to a depth of approximately 1000 feet, where the pressure would be 435 PSI, enough to compress the junk biomass to a density below 0.99. Then the material would continue to compress and sink to the abyssal sea floor some 14,000 feet below. Alternatively, and at even lower costs, huge artificial peat bogs could provide long-term carbon storage.

I ran rough numbers on such a project a decade ago. Looks like large-scale costs should be below $7/ton of carbon permanently sequestered in the abyssal depths. Water temperatures at that depth are near freezing and below the methane hydrate formation point, hence most methane produced through gradual decomposition would stay in the depths. If the developed industrial world is actually serious about carbon sequestration, it just needs to go to Brazil and create 500,000 well paying jobs for illiterate low-skill jungle weed growers. Let the CO2 emitting nations tax their CO2 emissions at $15/ton and pay Brazil $15/ton to inter it in the deep ocean. None of the stack capture schemes will ever work at even $30/ton. $15/ton is affordable, and actually dirt cheap, but I think it doubtful that India and China are going to pay an extra $15/ton for coal. If you can’t make that work, you can’t make anything work.

One needs to think about this problem in terms of scale of huge copper and coal mining heavy equipment. Let global carbon emitters pay for global photosynthetic sequestration.

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Comments on: Kentucky Carbon Capture Installation Opens – Will This One Work?

By: lenrosen4

By: Al Gage