Breakthrough in the technology to bury CO2 underground

An international team of scientists has succeeded in pumping carbon dioxide (CO ₂ ) deep underground and turning this toxic gas into stone.

This breakthrough opens a promising direction in research and development of CO2 storage technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, one of the causes of climate change.

In a study published in the June issue of Science magazine, scientists mixed CO ₂ with water, and then pumped the liquid mixture into a basalt rock. ground 400-800m.

This is the first time scientists have conducted such a study, and the pilot site is the Hellisheidi power plant in Iceland - the world's largest geothermal energy production facility.

The plant discharges 40,000 tons of CO2 each year, only 5% of the emissions of a coal plant of similar size, but still a worrying figure. In 2012, Hellisheidi began pumping 250 tons of CO ₂ and water into the ground.

The only thing that hinders this type of CO2 storage technology is that this method requires a lot of water.

Scientists were worried that the liquid mixture would take hundreds or even thousands of years to petrify.

However, after only 2 years, 95-98% of the mixes were pumped down to turn into white chalky stone.

With the unexpected results mentioned above, scientists decided to scale up the project, which aims to this summer to "bury" more than 10,000 tons of CO ₂ underground each year.

Expert Martin Stute, a hydrologist from Columbia University Earth Observatory, and co-author of the study, said he could inject large amounts of CO2 and store this toxic gas. In the form of solid rock in the ground safely, it only takes a very short time.

The only thing that hinders this type of CO2 storage technology is that this method requires a lot of water , specifically every ton of CO ₂ needs to dissolve with 25 tons of water. However, scientists say in some places it is possible to utilize seawater.

CO ₂ is believed to be the "culprit" of causing global warming, causing climate change, and this is the reason scientists have long sought to develop recovery and storage solutions. CO ₂ .

Basalt stone emerged as a bright candidate. This is a rock formed by magma erupting out of the volcanic mouth and then cooled down, has a thick, spongy structure and is rich in calcium, iron and magnesium. Basalt rock is a constituent of most of the seabed surface on Earth.

Researchers believe that this type of stone is necessary for the petrification of carbon to store underground.