Carbon sequestration captures excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores it in a benign way. Carbon capture and storage technologies are implemented in fossil fuel power plants, but archiving technology is just starting to be explored. Al Gore and Richard Branson offered a $25 million prize for removing a billion tons of carbon dioxide per year. Planting trees is a primitive form of carbon sequestration, while artificial photosynthesis is a more sophisticated version. Carbon sequestration technologies can be practiced at the source of heavy carbon dioxide emitters, but current approaches for disposal are not viable in the long run.
Carbon sequestration is a hot field of research that owes its latest popularity to the resurgence of global attention directed at global warming. The phrase refers to efforts to capture excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, condense it, and store it in some benign way. Carbon capture and storage (CCSD) technologies are implemented in a limited way in many fossil fuel power plants. The technology for capture is ahead of the technology for archiving, which is just starting to be seriously explored. Carbon sequestration could be an important part of tackling greenhouse gases.
In early 2007, Al Gore and Richard Branson raised interest in carbon sequestration technology by announcing a $25 million US Dollar (USD) prize for the first individual or team capable of removing a billion tons of carbon dioxide per year from the atmosphere over a ten-year period. Clearly, removing a billion tons of anything from the atmosphere per year is no trivial challenge.
The most primitive form of carbon sequestration would be to simply plant more trees. Plants naturally absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and produce oxygen. Much of the carbon from CO2 is integrated into their biomass and safely released into the soil after their death.
A more sophisticated version of carbon sequestration would be the pursuit of artificial photosynthesis. If the principles of photosynthesis could be reliably instantiated in solar cell-like devices, they would both generate energy and remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, probably at rates substantially higher than those of plants, which are limited to a certain range of chemical reactions and approaches.
One of the best places to practice carbon sequestration technologies is at the very source of heavy carbon dioxide emitters. For example, different approaches have been used to reduce the CO2 output of coal-fired power plants.
After the CO2 has been collected, it must be disposed of. This is usually done by ship or pipeline. Current approaches involve injecting it into the ground or pumping it into water 1000m deep on the seabed, where it forms large ‘lakes’ that take time to dissipate. Both of these approaches aren’t viable in the long run, however, because given enough time, CO2 levels reach equilibrium with the atmosphere.
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