U.S. researchers report new House Process could reduce global warming

by William Atkins

Friday, 09 November 2007

Harvard University and Penn State researchers have developed a new technology that is an accelerated process to help nature clean the atmosphere.

The process works by removing the artificially produced greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere and permanently transfer it to the oceans.

Their paper's abstract states, “We describe an approach to CO2 capture and storage from the atmosphere that involves enhancing the solubility of CO2 in the ocean by a process equivalent to the natural silicate weathering reaction.”

In the process: “HCl [hydrochloric acid] is electrochemically removed from the ocean and neutralized through reaction with silicate [volcanic] rocks. The increase in ocean alkalinity resulting from the removal of HCl causes atmospheric CO₂ to dissolve into the ocean where it will be stored primarily as HCO₃− [hydrogencarbonate (or, bicarbonate)] without further acidifying the ocean.”

Hydrochloric acid is the aqueous solution of hydrogen chloride gas (HCl).

The researchers also state that the process may be beneficial to coral reefs, which are currently under stress from changing global climate conditions.

The new climate change technique, called the House Process, is published in the November 7, 2007 issue of the journal Environmental Science and Technology. The title of the article is “Electrochemical Acceleration of Chemical Weathering as an Energetically Feasible Approach to Mitigating Anthropogenic Climate Change.”

Its authors are Kurt Zenz House, Christopher H. House, Daniel P. Schrag, and Michael J. Aziz. They are associated with the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University; Department of Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University; and/or Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

The researchers state that the House Process works on all natural sources of carbon dioxide and two-thirds of all artificial sources of carbon dioxide—it does not work on carbon dioxide emitted from power plants. They contend their process is a viable process to reduce global warming.

On the other hand, the researchers caution that their process will be expensive and time consuming and may have some environmental drawbacks with the chemical processes involved. They state that numerous chlorine gas-type industrial plants would need to be built along the coastlines of the world.

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