Carbon sequestration is the capture of carbon dioxide (CO2) and may refer specifically to:
Carbon sequestration describes long-term storage of carbon dioxide or other forms of carbon to either mitigate or defer global warming and avoid dangerous climate change. It has been proposed as a way to slow the atmospheric and marine accumulation of greenhouse gases, which are released by burning fossil fuels.[2]
Carbon dioxide is naturally captured from the atmosphere through biological, chemical or physical processes. Some anthropogenic sequestration techniques exploit these natural processes,[3] while some use entirely artificial processes.
Carbon dioxide may be captured as a pure by-product in processes related to petroleum refining or from flue gases from power generation.[4] CO2 sequestration includes the storage part of carbon capture and storage, which refers to large-scale, permanent artificial capture and sequestration of industrially produced CO2 using subsurface saline aquifers, reservoirs, ocean water, aging oil fields, or other carbon sinks.
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Biosequestration or carbon sequestration through biological processes affects the Global carbon cycle. Examples include major climatic fluctuations, such as the Azolla event, which created the current Arctic climate. Such processes created fossil fuels, as well as clathrate or limestone. By manipulating such processes, geoengineers seek to enhance sequestration.
Peat bogs are a very important carbon store. By creating new bogs, or enhancing existing ones, carbon can be sequestered.[5]
Reforestation is the replanting of trees on marginal crop and pasture lands to incorporate carbon from atmospheric CO2 into biomass.[6] For this process to succeed the carbon must not return to the atmosphere from burning or rotting when the trees die.[3] To this end, the trees must grow in perpetuity or the wood from them must itself be sequestered, e.g., via biochar, bio-energy with carbon storage (BECS) or landfill.
Globally, soils are estimated to contain approximately 1,500 gigatons of organic carbon, more than the amount in vegetation and the atmosphere.[7][8]
Modification of agricultural practices is a recognized method of carbon sequestration as soil can act as an effective carbon sink offsetting as much as 20% of 2010 carbon dioxide emissions annually. (See No-till)
Carbon emission reduction methods in agriculture can be grouped into two categories: reducing and/or displacing emissions and enhancing carbon removal. Some of these reductions involve increasing the efficiency of farm operations (i.e. more fuel-efficient equipment) while some involve interruptions in the natural carbon cycle. Also, some effective techniques (such as the elimination of stubble burning) can negatively impact other environmental concerns (increased herbicide use to control weeds not destroyed by burning).
Increasing yields and efficiency generally reduces emissions as well, since more food results from the same or less effort. Techniques include more accurate use of fertilizers, less soil disturbance, better irrigation, and crop strains bred for locally beneficial traits and increased yields.
Replacing more energy intensive farming operations can also reduce emissions. Reduced or no-till farming requires less machine use and burns correspondingly less fuel per acre. However, no-till usually increases use of weed-control chemicals and the residue now left on the soil surface is more likely to release its CO2 to the atmosphere as it decays, reducing the net carbon reduction.
In practice, most farming operations that incorporate post-harvest crop residues, wastes and byproducts back into the soil provide a carbon storage benefit. This is particularly the case for practices such as field burning of stubble - rather than releasing almost all of the stored CO2 to the atmosphere, tillage incorporates the biomass back into the soil where it can be absorbed and a portion of it stored permanently.
All crops absorb CO2 during growth and release it after harvest. The goal of agricultural carbon removal is to use the crop and its relation to the carbon cycle to permanently sequester carbon within the soil. This is done by selecting farming methods that return biomass to the soil and enhance the conditions in which the carbon within the plants will be reduced to its elemental nature and stored in a stable state. Methods for accomplishing this include:
Agricultural sequestration practices may have positive effects on soil, air, and water quality, be beneficial to wildlife, and expand food production. On degraded croplands, an increase of 1 ton of soil carbon pool may increase crop yield by 20 to 40 kilograms per hectare of wheat, 10 to 20 kg/ ha for maize, and 0.5 to 1 kg/ha for cowpeas.
The effects of soil sequestration can be reversed. If the soil is disrupted or tillage practices are abandoned, the soil becomes a net source of greenhouse gases. Typically after 15 to 30 years of sequestration, soil becomes saturated and ceases to absorb carbon. This implies that there is a global limit to the amount of carbon that soil can hold.
Many factors affect the costs of carbon sequestration including soil quality, transaction costs and various externalities such as leakage and unforeseen environmental damage. Because reduction of atmosperic CO2 is a long-term concern, farmers can be reluctant to adopt more expensive agricultural techniques when there is not a clear crop, soil, or economic benefit. Governments such as Australia and New Zealand are considering allowing farmers to sell carbon credits once they document that they have sufficiently increased soil carbon content.[9][10][11][12][13]
Ocean iron fertilization is an example of such a geoengineering technique.[14] Iron fertilization[15] attempts to encourage phytoplankton growth, which removes carbon from the atmosphere for at least a period of time.[16][17] This technique is controversial due to limited understanding its complete effects on the marine ecosystem,[18] including side effects and possibly large deviations from expected behavior. Such effects potentially include release of nitrogen oxides,[19] and disruption of the ocean's nutrient balance.[14]
Ian Jones proposes to fertilize the ocean with urea, a nitrogen rich substance, to encourage phytoplankton growth.
Australian company Ocean Nourishment Corporation (ONC) plans to sink hundreds of tonnes of urea into the ocean to boost CO2-absorbing phytoplankton growth as a way to combat climate change. In 2007, Sydney-based ONC completed an experiment involving 1 tonne of nitrogen in the Sulu Sea off the Philippines.[20]
Encouraging various ocean layers to mix can move nutrients and dissolved gases around, offering avenues for geoengineering.[21] Mixing may be achieved by placing large vertical pipes in the oceans to pump nutrient rich water to the surface, triggering blooms of algae, which store carbon when they grow and export carbon when they die.[21][22][23] This produces results somewhat similar to iron fertilization. One side-effect is a short-term rise in CO2, which limits its attractiveness.[24]
BECCS refers to biomass in power stations and boilers that use carbon capture and storage.[25][26] The carbon sequestered by the biomass would be captured and stored, thus removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.[27]
This technology is sometimes referred to as bio-energy with carbon storage, BECS, though this term can also refer to the carbon sequestration potential in other technologies, such as biochar.
Burying biomass (such as trees[28]) directly, mimics the natural processes that created fossil fuels.[29] Landfills also represents a physical method of sequestration.
Biochar is charcoal created by pyrolysis of biomass waste. The resulting material is added to a landfill or used as a soil improver to create terra preta.[30][31] Biogenic carbon is recycled naturally in the carbon cycle. Pyrolysing it to biochar renders the carbon inert so that it remains sequestered in soil. Further, the soil encourages bulking with new organic matter, which gives additional sequestration benefit.
In the soil, the carbon is unavailable for oxidation to CO2 and consequential atmospheric release. This is one technique advocated by prominent scientist James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis.[32] According to Simon Shackley, "people are talking more about something in the range of one to two billion tonnes a year."[33]
The mechanisms related to biochar are referred to as bio-energy with carbon storage, BECS.
River mouths bring large quantities of nutrients and dead material from upriver into the ocean as part of the process that eventually produces fossil fuels. Transporting material such as crop waste out to sea and allowing it to sink exploits this idea to increase carbon storage.[34] International regulations on marine dumping may restrict or prevent use of this technique.
Carbon dioxide can be injected into depleted oil and gas reservoirs and other geological features, or can be injected into the deep ocean.[35]
The first large-scale CO2 sequestration project which began in 1996 is called Sleipner, and is located in the North Sea where Norway's StatoilHydro strips carbon dioxide from natural gas with amine solvents and disposed of this carbon dioxide in a deep saline aquifer. In 2000, a coal-fueled synthetic natural gas plant in Beulah, North Dakota, became the world's first coal using plant to capture and store carbon dioxide, at the Weyburn-Midale Carbon Dioxide Project.[36]
CO2 has been used extensively in enhanced crude oil recovery operations in the United States beginning in 1972.[37] There are in excess of 10,000 wells that inject CO2 in the state of Texas alone. The gas comes in part from anthropogenic sources, but is principally from large naturally occurring geologic formations of CO2. It is transported to the oil-producing fields through a large network of over 5,000 kilometres (3,100 mi) of CO2 pipelines. The use of CO2 for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods in heavy oil reservoirs in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) has also been proposed.[38] However, transport cost remains an important hurdle. An extensive CO2 pipeline system does not yet exist in the WCSB. Athabasca oil sands mining that produces CO2 is hundreds of kilometers north of the subsurface heavy oil reservoirs that could most benefit from CO2 injection.
Carbon, in the form of CO2 can be removed from the atmosphere by chemical processes, and stored in stable carbonate mineral forms. This process is known as 'carbon sequestration by mineral carbonation' or mineral sequestration. The process involves reacting carbon dioxide with abundantly available metal oxides–either magnesium oxide (MgO) or calcium oxide (CaO)–to form stable carbonates. These reactions are exothermic and occur naturally (e.g., the weathering of rock over geologic time periods).[39][40]
Calcium and magnesium are found in nature typically as calcium and magnesium silicates (such as forsterite and serpentinite) and not as binary oxides. For forsterite and serpentine the reactions are:
The following table lists principal metal oxides of Earth's crust. Theoretically up to 22% of this mineral mass is able to form carbonates.
| Earthen Oxide | Percent of Crust | Carbonate | Enthalpy change (kJ/mol) |
|---|---|---|---|
| SiO2 | 59.71 | ||
| Al2O3 | 15.41 | ||
| CaO | 4.90 | CaCO3 | -179 |
| MgO | 4.36 | MgCO3 | -117 |
| Na2O | 3.55 | Na2CO3 | |
| FeO | 3.52 | FeCO3 | |
| K2O | 2.80 | K2CO3 | |
| Fe2O3 | 2.63 | FeCO3 | |
| 21.76 | All Carbonates |
These reactions are slightly more favorable at low temperatures.[39] This process occurs naturally over geologic time frames and is responsible for much of the Earth's surface limestone. The reaction rate can be made faster, for example by reacting at higher temperatures and/or pressures, or by pre-treatment, although this method requires additional energy.
CO2 naturally reacts with peridotite rock in surface exposures of ophiolites, notably in Oman. It has been suggested that this process can be enhanced to carry out natural mineralisation of CO2.[41][42]
Traditional cement manufacture releases large amounts of carbon dioxide, but newly developed cement types from Novacem[43] can absorb CO2 from ambient air during hardening.[44] A similar technique was pioneered by TecEco, which has been producing "EcoCement" since 2002.[45]
In Estonia, oil shale ash, generated by power stations could be used as sorbents for CO2 mineral sequestration. The amount of CO2 captured averaged 60–65% of the carbonaceous CO2 and 10–11% of the total CO2 emissions.[46]
Various carbon dioxide scrubbing processes have been proposed to remove CO2 from the air, usually using a variant of the Kraft process. Carbon dioxide scrubbing variants exist based on potassium carbonate, which can be used to create liquid fuels, or on sodium hydroxide.[47][48][49] These notably include artificial trees proposed by Klaus Lackner to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using chemical scrubbers.[50][51]
Carbon dioxide sequestration in basalt involves the injecting of CO2 into deep-sea formations. The CO2 first mixes with seawater and then reacts with the basalt, both of which are alkaline-rich elements. This reaction results in the release of Ca2+ and Mg2+ ions forming stable carbonate minerals.[52]
Underwater basalt offers a good alternative to other forms of oceanic carbon storage because it has a number of trapping measures to ensure added protection against leakage. These measures include “geothermal, sediment, gravitational and hydrate formation.” Because CO2 hydrate is denser than CO2 in seawater, the risk of leakage is minimal. Injecting the CO2 at depths greater than 2,700 meters (8,900 ft) ensures that the CO2 has a greater density than seawater, causing it to sink.[53]
One possible injection site is Juan de Fuca plate. Researchers at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory found that this plate at the western coast of the United States has a possible storage capacity of 208 gigatons. This could cover the entire current U.S. carbon emissions for over 100 years.[53]
This process is undergoing tests as part of the CarbFix project.
Adding crushed limestone[54] or volcanic rock[55] to oceans enhances the solubility pump, which naturally removes CO2 from the atmosphere. Various other scientists have explored this technique, and suggested a variety of different bases that added to the ocean, increase CO2 absorption.[56][57][58][59][60][61]
Electrolysis removes hydrochloric acid from the ocean for neutralization with silicate minerals or rocks. Electrolysis may contribute to carbon addition to the ocean if not carefully managed.[62]
Carbon dioxide may be stored deep underground. At depth, hydrostatic pressure acts to keep it in a liquid state. Reservoir design faults, rock fissures and tectonic processes may act to release the gas stored into the ocean or atmosphere.
Some argue that the cost of carbon sequestration would actually increase over time. The use of the technology would add an additional 1-5 cents of cost per kilowatt hour, according to estimate made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The financial costs of modern coal technology would nearly double if use of CCS technology were to be implemented.[63]
The energy requirements of sequestration processes may be significant. In one paper, sequestration consumed 25 percent of the plant's rated 600 megawatt output capacity.[64]