Carbon Sequestration discussion
On July 13, 2006, KansasCity.com published an AP wire story about a three day conference being held at the University of Kansas to discuss carbon sequestration. The conference is being attended mainly by researchers who are receiving their funding from the Department of Energy to talk about potential methods of capturing CO2 that is released from large facilities and then storing the material underground somewhere.
Some of the researchers are SURE that the task can be done.
“We know it can be done. We’re doing it now on a very small scale,” said Tim Carr, head of the Kansas Geological Survey’s energy research section.
However, the story provides some insights about just how little is known about how to actually go about implementing the envisioned process.
Here are a couple of short passages from the article:
Still, Carr said the process isn’t a silver bullet to the problem of excess carbon dioxide.
“Look at Massachusetts. It generates a lot of (carbon dioxide), but it’s sitting on top of granite. It doesn’t have the storage capacity,” he said.
A little bit later in the story there is another one:
“We’re still in the research-and-development phase,” said Charles Byrer, a project manager at the National Energy Technology Center at Morgantown, W.Va. “Carbon sequestration is an option. Our task now is to demonstrate its cost-effectiveness.”
I am not surprised that a project manager from the National Energy Technology Center in West Virginia is seriously interested in burying CO2 underground. After all, that is the state where mountain tops get blown off and put into streams in order to get the coal that is the main source of the CO2 in the first place.
