Carbon capture and storage: Turning air into stone
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UK Only Article:
standard article
Issue:
How to make a good teacher
Fly Title:
Carbon capture and storage
Main image:
20160611_stp004.jpg
Rubric:
How to keep waste carbon dioxide in the ground
THIS year the world’s power stations, farms, cars and the like will generate the equivalent of nearly 37 billion tonnes of waste carbon dioxide. All of it will be dumped into the atmosphere, where it will trap infra-red radiation and warm the planet. Earth is already about 0.85°C warmer than last century’s average temperature. Thanks to the combined influence of greenhouse-gas emissions and El Niño, a heat-releasing oceanic phenomenon, 2016 looks set to be the warmest year on record, and by a long way.
It would be better, then, to find some method of disposing of CO2. One idea, carbon capture and storage (CCS), involves collecting the gas from power stations and factories and burying it underground where it can do no harm. But CCS is expensive and mostly untried. One worry is whether the buried gas will …
Source: Utilities
Carbon capture and storage: Turning air into stone