Figuring out where to put the carbon
To meet our immediate energy needs without exacerbating climate change, most experts agree, we’ll need to find a way to store the carbon dioxide given off by the combustion of coal, oil and natural gas. But no full-scale storage systems exist, and the plans to create them have many unknowns.New projects at MIT could help to fill that information gap. At the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting last month in San Francisco, two teams explained how they are addressing some of the uncertainties over carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Many scientists view CCS as a promising way to dramatically reduce the amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere.Carbon capture refers to separating out a stream of concentrated carbon dioxide from the rest of the gases and particles given off by fossil fuel combustion. Sequestration involves disposing of that CO2 by pumping it deep underground or beneath the oceans, or converting...