TAG | Australia begins to bury carbon dioxide |
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| by William Atkins | |
| Thursday, 03 April 2008 | |
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The A$40-million experimental project is called the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC) Otway Project. The Co-operative Research Centres (CRCs) is a consortium of organizations, assisted by the Australian government, dedicated to developing scientific innovations and discoveries into new products, services, and technologies so that Australia has more productive, efficient, and competitive industries. The research and demonstration project will simulate how carbon dioxide (chemical symbol CO2, one atom of carbon (C) and two atoms of oxygen (O)) could someday be captured from power stations and stored undergound so as not to be emitted into Earth's atmosphere. The project is desigend to extract naturally trapped carbon dioxide from the Otway Basin and then transport the gas several kilometers by pipeline. After completing its journey, the gas will be injected and stored in a depleted underground gas field. The plant, directed by its chief executive Peter Cook, will be located in the southern state of Victoria, specifically near Warrnambool, in the southwestern part of the state. According to Cook, the geosequestration plant is the first in Australia (first one in the southern hemisphere), and one of only a few in the world. The plant was opened on Wednesday, April 2, 2008, for the purpose of showing the ability of geosequestration to store greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, underground rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is stored naturally in the ocean and in plants and other organisms. However, when humans produce carbon dioxide as a byproduct of its manufacturing processes, the gas dirties up Earth’s atmosphere. Thus, people are trying to find ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or to discover ways to not place it in the atmosphere in the first place. Consequently, geosequestration is an experimental technology that could help to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, from the burning of fossil fuels. The human-generated process of geosequestration uses a reservoir (or sink) to artificially contain carbon dioxide. How do you learn more about the CO2CRC Otways Project? Check out the next page. |
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