Capturing Carbon Dioxide

The Greens have pestered the rest of the international community for years about the need to moderate mankind’s contribution to global warming. In particular, they fear that industrial and automotive emissions have resulted in an uncharacteristically speedy advance in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.

Of course, it’s important to bear in mind that there is no substantive link between mankind’s actions and increased CO2 levels. In fact, it could very likely be the result of normal, cyclical patterns in the overall lifetime of the Earth. Considering that our existence on this planet is but a blip during the 5-billion year age of the planet, I am inclined to lean in this direction.

Moreover, the Greens have based their claims predominantly on selective measurement, rhetoric, and faith instead of actual, hard scientific evidence. To that end, I might direct you to an article we posted on our site some time ago that reported on Michael Crichton’s observations about these so-called environmentalists and their claims.

In any event, researchers have recently developed a new methodology that may one day prove useful in minimizing carbon dioxide atmospheric concentrations if a direct correlation with global warming is ultimately observed. Highlights of this research are excerpted below from Futurepundit. Hopefully, this will help to appease some of the more diehard fanatics out there.

The naturally occurring mineral serpentine sequesters carbon dioxide very slowly over eons. Some Penn State researchers have found that by dissolving serpentine in sulfuric acid, they can produce compounds that will very rapidly bind to carbon dioxide.

The metamorphic mineral serpentine -- or magnesium silicate hydroxide -- is composed of magnesium, silicon and oxygen and is plentiful. The researchers used material from the Cedar Hills quarry on the Pennsylvania/ Maryland border for this study, but the mineral is available in large quantities in many places. The U.S. deposits of the minerals that can be used for this process -- serpentine and ovivine -- can sequester all the carbon dioxide emissions produced from fossil fuels.

"Previous researchers investigating serpentine for use in sequestering carbon dioxide have crushed serpentine very finely, to sizes smaller than beach sand, but, even at these small sizes, it takes high temperatures to speed up the reaction, "says Maroto-Valer. "With our method, we do not need to crush it that fine and we do not need high temperatures. In fact, the reaction gives off heat. Our method is much less energy expensive."

They aren't done developing this method to the point of being practically useful. Also, there is no big push in the United States at this point to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Still, this could turn out to be a useful technique if global warming is eventually proven to be a serious problem.

Suppose coal can be made to burn extremely cleanly without even generating carbon dioxide emissions. Add in future advances in battery technology that make batteries light enough and cheap enough to be used in electric cars. Then at some point we might burn coal to supply electricity to charge batteries in electric cars.