Okay, I hate to get all super-technical on you
So, there was this incident in the 80’s with a lake called Lake Nyos – it has since been called the deadliest lake ever by Guinness, because one day it burped 1.6 million tonnes of CO2, which burst out and covered suffocated 1700 people and 3500 livestock within 16 miles of the lake.
This degassing happened because the deeper water, for various possible reasons, was highly carbonated (delicious!), and something (perhaps cold water hitting one side of the lake and starting convection) caused the pressure to change suddenly.
My question is this: Isn’t this exactly the worst possible accident that could happen with Carbon sequestration, AKA carbon capture and storage underground? It’s the act of taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and storing it deep underground.
Aren’t we just setting ourselves up, at that point, for a hilarious ironic accident?
We now return you to bunnies and lolcats.
That depends upon the method of sequestration.
If we’re transforming the CO2 into a solid matrix (i.e. calcium carbonate), then it’ll take a lot more than an tremor-induced wave to release the gas. It would require a significant amount of heat, equivalent to the temperature of the earth’s magma layer, or a great deal of acid, to release the gas. This is true for most of the solid-matrix sequestration schemes I’m aware of.
If we’re simply storing the CO2 in a liquid or condensed gaseous state, then we’re morons.
Re: That depends upon the method of sequestration.
I love you guys! Also, it appears sometimes we’re morons. From the same wiki page:
Re: That depends upon the method of sequestration.
Hrmm, if they’re going with a pelagic aquifer, as opposed to a terrestrial one, then I suppose that’s nominally acceptable. The odds of a pelagic aquifer suffering some event that would cause a CO2 eruption with human damage akin to the Nyos event are very unlikely (mostly as continental shelves prevent circulation of that aquifer near inhabited areas).
It could produce a heck of a fishkill however, if the timing and placement were perfect.
Re: That depends upon the method of sequestration.
Hrmm, if they’re going with a pelagic aquifer, as opposed to a terrestrial one, then I suppose that’s nominally acceptable. The odds of a pelagic aquifer suffering some event that would cause a CO2 eruption with human damage akin to the Nyos event are very unlikely (mostly as continental shelves prevent circulation of that aquifer near inhabited areas).
It could produce a heck of a fishkill however, if the timing and placement were perfect.
Re: That depends upon the method of sequestration.
I love you guys! Also, it appears sometimes we’re morons. From the same wiki page:
That depends upon the method of sequestration.
If we’re transforming the CO2 into a solid matrix (i.e. calcium carbonate), then it’ll take a lot more than an tremor-induced wave to release the gas. It would require a significant amount of heat, equivalent to the temperature of the earth’s magma layer, or a great deal of acid, to release the gas. This is true for most of the solid-matrix sequestration schemes I’m aware of.
If we’re simply storing the CO2 in a liquid or condensed gaseous state, then we’re morons.