Carbon sequestration and sequestration potential of various sink

Increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide means increase in global temperature. The amount of carbon dioxide varies naturally.

Natural sinks

Trees serve as carbon sinks during growing seasons. Absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans via physicochemical and biological processes. Synthesis of food through Photosynthesis by plants. Whilst the creation of artificial sinks has been discussed, no major artificial systems remove carbon from the atmosphere on a material scale.

Carbon Sources

Carbon sources include:

Combustion of fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and oil) by humans for energy and transportation ; Farmland (by animal respiration); there are proposals for improvements in farming practices to reverse this.

Storage in terrestrial and marine environments

Soils

Soils represent a short to long-term carbon storage medium, and contain more carbon than all terrestrial vegetation and the atmosphere combined. Plant litter and other biomass including charcoal accumulates as organic matter in soils, and is degraded by chemical weathering and biological degradation. More recalcitrant organic carbon polymers such as cellulose, hemi-cellulose, lignin, aliphatic compounds, waxes and terpenoids are collectively retained as humus.

Organic matter tends to accumulate in litter and soils of colder regions such as the boreal forests of North America and the Taiga of Russia. Leaf litter and humus are rapidly oxidized and poorly retained in sub-tropical and tropical climate conditions due to high temperatures and extensive leaching by rainfall. Areas where shifting cultivation or slash and burn agriculture are practiced are generally only fertile for 2–3 years before they are abandoned. These tropical jungles are similar to coral reefs in that they are highly efficient at conserving and circulating necessary nutrients, which explains their lushness in a nutrient desert. Much organic carbon retained in many agricultural areas worldwide has been severely depleted due to intensive farming practices.

Grasslands contribute to soil organic matter, stored mainly in their extensive fibrous root mats. Due in part to the climatic conditions of these regions (e.g. cooler temperatures and semi-arid to arid conditions), these soils can accumulate significant quantities of organic matter. This can vary based on rainfall, the length of the winter season, and the frequency of naturally occurring lightning-induced grass-fires. While these fires release carbon dioxide, they improve the quality of the grasslands overall, in turn increasing the amount of carbon retained in the humic material. They also deposit carbon directly to the soil in the form of char that does not significantly degrade back to carbon dioxide.

Forest fires release absorbed carbon back into the atmosphere, as does deforestation due to rapidly increased oxidation of soil organic matter.

Organic matter in peat bogs undergoes slow anaerobic decomposition below the surface. This process is slow enough that in many cases the bog grows rapidly and fixes more carbon from the atmosphere than is released. Over time, the peat grows deeper. Peat bogs hold approximately one-quarter of the carbon stored in land plants and soils.

Under some conditions, forests and peat bogs may become sources of CO₂, such as when a forest is flooded by the construction of a hydroelectric dam. Unless the forests and peat are harvested before flooding, the rotting vegetation is a source of CO₂ and methane comparable in magnitude to the amount of carbon released by a fossil-fuel powered plant of equivalent power.

Regenerative agriculture

Current agricultural practices lead to carbon loss from soils. It has been suggested that improved farming practices could return the soils to being a carbon sink. Present worldwide practices of overgrazing are substantially reducing many grasslands' performance as carbon sinks.

 The regenerative agriculture, if practiced on the planet’s 3.6 billion tillable acres, could sequester up to 40% of current CO₂ emissions. They claim that agricultural carbon sequestration has the potential to mitigate global warming. When using biologically based regenerative practices, this dramatic benefit can be accomplished with no decrease in yields or farmer profits. Organically managed soils can convert carbon dioxide from a greenhouse gas into a food-producing asset.

In 2006, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, largely from fossil fuel combustion, were estimated at nearly 6.5 billion tons. If a 2,000 (lb/ac)/year sequestration rate was achieved on all 434,000,000 acres (1,760,000 km²) of cropland in the United States, nearly 1.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide would be sequestered per year, mitigating close to one quarter of the country's total fossil fuel emissions.

Oceans

Presently, oceans are CO₂ sinks, and represent the largest active carbon sink on Earth, absorbing more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide that humans put into the air. The solubility pump is the primary mechanism responsible for the CO₂ absorption by the oceans.

The biological pump plays a negligible role, because of the limitation to pump by ambient light and nutrients required by the phytoplankton that ultimately drive it. Total inorganic carbon is not believed to limit primary production in the oceans, so its increasing availability in the ocean does not directly affect production (the situation on land is different, since enhanced atmospheric levels of CO₂ essentially "fertilize" land plant growth to some threshold). However, ocean acidification by invading anthropogenic CO₂ may affect the biological pump by negatively impacting calcifying organisms such as coccolithophores, foraminiferans and pteropods. Climate change may also affect the biological pump in the future by warming and stratifying the surface ocean, thus reducing the supply of limiting nutrients to surface waters.

CO₂ could potentially increase primary productivity, particularly in eel grasses in coastal and estuarine habitats.

The Southern Indian Ocean is becoming less effective at absorbing carbon dioxide due to changes to the region's climate which include higher wind speeds.

On longer timescales, oceans may be both sources and sinks – during ice ages CO₂ levels decrease to ≈180 ppmv, and much of this is believed to be stored in the oceans. As ice ages end, CO₂ is released from the oceans and CO₂ levels during previous inter glacials have been around ≈280 ppmv. This role as a sink for CO₂ is driven by two processes, the solubility pump and the biological pump. The former is primarily a function of differential CO₂ solubility in seawater and the thermohaline circulation, while the latter is the sum of a series of biological processes that transport carbon (in organic and inorganic forms) from the surface euphotic zone to the ocean's interior. A small fraction of the organic carbon transported by the biological pump to the sea floor is buried in anoxic conditions under sediments and ultimately forms fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas.

At the end of glacials with sea level rapidly rising, corals tend to grow slower due to increased ocean temperature as seen on the Showtime series "Years of Living Dangerously". The calcium carbonate from which coral skeletons are made is just over 60% carbon dioxide. If we postulate that coral reefs were eroded down to the glacial sea level, then coral reefs have grown 120m upward since the end of the recent glacial.

Enhancing natural sequestration

Forests

Forests can be carbon stores, and they are carbon dioxide sinks when they are increasing in density or area. In Canada's boreal forests as much as 80% of the total carbon is stored in the soils as dead organic matter. Tropical forests absorb about 18% of all carbon dioxide added by fossil fuels. Truly mature tropical forests, by definition, grow rapidly as each tree produces at least 10 new trees each year. Asian forests absorb about 5 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hectare each year.

The global cooling effect of carbon sequestration by forests is partially counterbalanced in that reforestation can decrease the reflection of sunlight (albedo). Mid-to-high latitude forests have a much lower albedo during snow seasons than flat ground, thus contributing to warming. Modeling that compares the effects of albedo differences between forests and grasslands suggests that expanding the land area of forests in temperate zones offers only a temporary cooling benefit.

In the United States in 2004 (the most recent year for which EPA statistics are available), forests sequestered 10.6% (637 MegaTonnes) of the carbon dioxide released in the United States by the combustion of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas; 5657 MegaTonnes). Urban trees sequestered another 1.5% (88 MegaTonnes. To further reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 7%, as stipulated by the Kyoto Protocol, would require the planting of "an area the size of Texas [8% of the area of Brazil] every 30 years". Carbon offset programs are planting millions of fast-growing trees per year to reforest tropical lands, for as little as $0.10 per tree; over their typical 40-year lifetime, one million of these trees will fix 1 to 2 Mega Tonnes of carbon dioxide. 

In Canada, reducing timber harvesting would have very little impact on carbon dioxide emissions because of the combination of harvest and stored carbon in manufactured wood products along with the regrowth of the harvested forests. Additionally, the amount of carbon released from harvesting is small compared to the amount of carbon lost each year to forest fires and other natural disturbances.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that "a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fibre or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit". Sustainable management practices keep forests growing at a higher rate over a potentially longer period of time, thus providing net sequestration benefits in addition to those of unmanaged forests.

Life expectancy of forests varies throughout the world, influenced by tree species, site conditions and natural disturbance patterns. In some forests carbon may be stored for centuries, while in other forests carbon is released with frequent stand replacing fires. Forests that are harvested prior to stand replacing events allow for the retention of carbon in manufactured forest products such as lumber. However, only a portion of the carbon removed from logged forests ends up as durable goods and buildings. The remainder ends up as sawmill by-products such as pulp, paper and pallets, which often end with incineration (resulting in carbon release into the atmosphere) at the end of their lifecycle. For instance, of the 1,692 Mega Tonnes of carbon harvested from forests in Oregon and Washington (U.S) from 1900 to 1992, only 23% is in long-term storage in forest products.

Artificial sequestration

For carbon to be sequestered artificially (i.e. not using the natural processes of the carbon cycle) it must first be captured, or it must be significantly delayed or prevented from being re-released into the atmosphere (by combustion, decay, etc.,) from an existing carbon-rich material, by being incorporated into an enduring usage (such as in construction). Thereafter it can be passively stored or remain productively utilized over time in a variety of ways.

For example, upon harvesting, wood (as a carbon-rich material) can be immediately burned or otherwise serve as a fuel, returning its carbon to the atmosphere, or it can be incorporated into construction or a range of other durable products, thus sequestering its carbon over years or even centuries.

Indeed, a very carefully designed and durable, energy-efficient and energy-capturing building has the potential to sequester (in its carbon-rich construction materials), as much as or more carbon than was released by the acquisition and incorporation of all its materials and than will be released by building-function "energy-imports" during the structure's (potentially multi-century) existence. Such a structure might be termed "carbon neutral" or even "carbon negative". Building construction and operation (electricity usage, heating, etc.) are estimated to contribute nearly half of the annual human-caused carbon additions to the atmosphere.

Natural-gas purification plants often already have to remove carbon dioxide, either to avoid dry ice clogging gas tankers or to prevent carbon-dioxide concentrations exceeding the 3% maximum permitted on the natural-gas distribution grid.

Beyond this, one of the most likely early applications of carbon capture is the capture of carbon dioxide from flue gases at power stations (in the case of coal, this coal pollution mitigation is sometimes known as "clean coal"). A typical new 1000 MW coal-fired power station produces around 6 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. Adding carbon capture to existing plants can add significantly to the costs of energy production; scrubbing costs aside, a 1000MW coal plant will require the storage of about 50 million barrels (7,900,000 m³) of carbon dioxide a year. However, scrubbing is relatively affordable when added to new plants based on coal gasification technology, where it is estimated to raise energy costs for households in the United States using only coal-fired electricity sources from 10 cents per kW·h to 12 cents.

Carbon capture

Currently, capture of carbon dioxide is performed on a large scale by absorption of carbon dioxide onto various amine-based solvents. Other techniques are currently being investigated, such as pressure swing adsorption, temperature swing adsorption, gas separation membranes, cryogenics and flue capture.

In coal-fired power stations, the main alternatives to retrofitting amine-based absorbers to existing power stations are two new technologies: coal gasification combined-cycle and oxy-fuel combustion. Gasification first produces a "syngas" primarily of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, which is burned, with carbon dioxide filtered from the flue gas. Oxy-fuel combustion burns the coal in oxygen instead of air, producing only carbon dioxide and water vapour, which are relatively easily separated. Some of the combustion products must be returned to the combustion chamber, either before or after separation, otherwise the temperatures would be too high for the turbine.

Another long-term option is carbon capture directly from the air using hydroxides. The air would literally be scrubbed of its CO₂ content. This idea offers an alternative to non-carbon-based fuels for the transportation sector.

Examples of carbon sequestration at coal plants include converting carbon from smokestacks into baking soda, and algae-based carbon capture, circumventing storage by converting algae into fuel or feed.

Oceans

Another proposed form of carbon sequestration in the ocean is direct injection. In this method, carbon dioxide is pumped directly into the water at depth, and expected to form "lakes" of liquid CO₂ at the bottom. Experiments carried out in moderate to deep waters (350–3600 m) indicate that the liquid CO₂ reacts to form solid CO₂ clathrate hydrates, which gradually dissolve in the surrounding waters.

This method, too, has potentially dangerous environmental consequences. The carbon dioxide does react with the water to form carbonic acid, H₂CO₃; however, most (as much as 99%) remains as dissolved molecular CO₂. The equilibrium would no doubt be quite different under the high pressure conditions in the deep ocean. In addition, if deep-sea bacterial methanogens that reduce carbon dioxide were to encounter the carbon dioxide sinks, levels of methane gas may increase, leading to the generation of an even worse greenhouse gas. 

Even though life appears to be rather sparse in the deep ocean basins, energy and chemical effects in these deep basins could have far-reaching implications.

An additional method of long-term ocean-based sequestration is to gather crop residue such as corn stalks or excess hay into large weighted bales of biomass and deposit it in the alluvial fan areas of the deep ocean basin. Dropping these residues in alluvial fans would cause the residues to be quickly buried in silt on the sea floor, sequestering the biomass for very long time spans. Alluvial fans exist in all of the world's oceans and seas where river deltas fall off the edge of the continental shelf such as the Mississippi alluvial fan in the gulf of Mexico and the Nile alluvial fan in the Mediterranean Sea. A downside, however, would be an increase in aerobic bacteria growth due to the introduction of biomass, leading to more competition for oxygen resources in the deep sea, similar to the oxygen minimum zone.

Mineral sequestration

Mineral sequestration aims to trap carbon in the form of solid carbonate salts. This process occurs slowly in nature and is responsible for the deposition and accumulation of limestone over geologic time. Carbonic acid in groundwater slowly reacts with complex silicates to dissolve calcium, magnesium, alkalis and silica and leave a residue of clay minerals. The dissolved calcium and magnesium react with bicarbonate to precipitate calcium and magnesium carbonates, a process that organisms use to make shells. When the organisms die, their shells are deposited as sediment and eventually turn into limestone. Lime stones have accumulated over billions of years of geologic time and contain much of Earth's carbon. Ongoing research aims to speed up similar reactions involving alkali carbonates.

Several serpentinite deposits are being investigated as potentially large scale CO₂ storage sinks such as those found in NSW, Australia, where the first mineral carbonation pilot plant project is underway. Beneficial re-use of magnesium carbonate from this process could provide feedstock for new products developed for the built environment and agriculture without returning the carbon into the atmosphere and so acting as a carbon sink.

One proposed reaction is that of the olivine-rich rock dunite, or its hydrated equivalent serpentinite with carbon dioxide to form the carbonate mineral magnesite, plus silica and iron oxide (magnetite).

Serpentinite sequestration is favored because of the non-toxic and stable nature of magnesium carbonate. The ideal reactions involve the magnesium end member components of the olivine or serpentine the latter derived from earlier olivine by hydration and silicification. The presence of iron in the olivine or serpentine reduces the efficiency of sequestration, since the iron components of these minerals break down to iron oxide and silica.

Zeolitic imidazolate frameworks

Zeolitic imidazolate frameworks is a metal-organic framework carbon dioxide sink which could be used to keep industrial emissions of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Carbon sequestration

Carbon sequestration is the process involved in carbon capture and the long-term storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide or other forms of carbon to mitigate or defer global warming. It has been proposed as a way to slow the atmospheric and marine accumulation of greenhouse gases, which are released by burning fossil fuels.

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is naturally captured from the atmosphere through biological, chemical, and physical processes. Artificial processes have been devised to produce similar effects, including large-scale, artificial capture and sequestration of industrially produced CO₂ using subsurface saline aquifers, reservoirs, ocean water, aging oil fields, or other carbon sinks.

Description

Carbon sequestration is the process involved in carbon capture and the long-term storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) and may refer specifically to:

·         "The process of removing carbon from the atmosphere and depositing it in a reservoir." When carried out deliberately, this may also be referred to as carbon dioxide removal, which is a form of geoengineering.

·         Carbon capture and storage, where carbon dioxide is removed from flue gases (e.g., at power stations) before being stored in underground reservoirs.

·         Natural biogeochemical cycling of carbonbetween the atmosphere and reservoirs, such as by chemical weathering of rocks.

Carbon dioxide may be captured as a pure by-product in processes related to petroleum refining or from flue gases from power generation. CO
₂sequestration includes the storage part of carbon capture and storage, which refers to large-scale, artificial capture and sequestration of industrially produced CO₂ using subsurface saline aquifers, reservoirs, ocean water, aging oil fields, or other carbon sinks.

Carbon sequestration describes long-term storage of carbon dioxide or other forms of carbon to either mitigate or defer global warming and avoid dangerous climate change. It has been proposed as a way to slow the atmospheric and marine accumulation of greenhouse gases, which are released by burning fossil fuels.

Carbon dioxide is naturally captured from the atmosphere through biological, chemical or physical processes. Some artificial sequestration techniques exploit these natural processes, while some use entirely artificial processes.

There are three ways that this sequestration can be carried out; post-combustion capture, pre-combustion capture, and oxy-combustion. A wide variety of separation techniques are being pursued, including gas phase separation, absorption into a liquid, and adsorption on a solid, as well as hybrid processes, such as adsorption/membrane systems. These above processes basically will capture carbon emitting from power plants, factories, fuel burning industries and so on.

Biological processes

Biosequestration or carbon sequestration through biological processes affects the global carbon cycle. Examples include major climatic fluctuations, such as the Azolla event, which created the current Arctic climate. Such processes created fossil fuels, as well as clathrate and limestone. By manipulating such processes, geoengineers seek to enhance sequestration.

Peat production

Peat bogs act as a sink for carbon due to the accumulation of partially decayed biomass that would otherwise continue to decay completely. There is a variance on how much the peatlands act as a carbon sink or carbon source that can be linked to varying climates in different areas of the world and different times of the year. By creating new bogs, or enhancing existing ones, the amount of carbon that is sequestered by bogs would increase.

Forestry

Reforestation is the replanting of trees on marginal crop and pasture lands to incorporate carbon from atmospheric CO₂ into biomass. For this process to succeed the carbon must not return to the atmosphere from mass burning or rotting when the trees die. To this end, land allotted to the trees must not be converted to other uses and management of the frequency of disturbances might be necessary in order to avoid extreme events. Alternatively, the wood from them must itself be sequestered, e.g., via biochar, bio-energy with carbon storage (BECS), landfill or 'stored' by use in e.g. construction. Short of growth in perpetuity, however, reforestation with long-lived trees (>100 years) will sequester carbon for a more graduated release, minimizing impact during the expected carbon crisis of the 21st century.

Urban forestry

Urban forestry increases the amount of carbon taken up in cities by adding new tree sites and the sequestration of carbon occurs over the lifetime of the tree. It is generally practiced and maintained on smaller scales, like in cities. The results of urban forestry can have different results depending on the type of vegetation that is being used, so it can function as a sink but can also function as a source of emissions. Along with sequestration by the plants which is difficult to measure but seems to have little effect on the overall amount of carbon dioxide that is uptaken, the vegetation can have indirect effects on carbon by reducing need for energy consumption.

Wetland restoration

Wetland soil is an important carbon sink; 14.5% of the world's soil carbon is found in wetlands, while only 6% of the world's land is composed of wetlands.

Agriculture

Compared to natural vegetation, cropland soils are depleted in soil organic carbon (SOC). When a soil is converted from natural land or semi natural land, such as forests, woodlands, grasslands, steppes and savannas, the SOC content in the soil reduces with about 30–40%. This loss is due to the removal of plant material containing carbon, in terms of harvests.

When the land use changes, the carbon in the soil will either increase or decrease, this change will continue until the soil reaches a new equilibrium. Deviations from this equilibrium can also be affected by variated climate. The decreasing of SOC content can be counteracted by increasing the carbon input, this can be done with several strategies, e.g. leave harvest residues on the field, use manure as fertiliser or include perennial crops in the rotation. Perennial crops have larger below ground biomass fraction, which increases the SOC content. Globally, soils are estimated to contain approximately 1,500 gigatons of organic carbon to 1 m depth, more than the amount in vegetation and the atmosphere.

Modification of agricultural practices is a recognized method of carbon sequestration as soil can act as an effective carbon sink offsetting as much as 20% of 2010 carbon dioxide emissions annually.

Carbon emission reduction methods in agriculture can be grouped into two categories: reducing and/or displacing emissions and enhancing carbon removal. Some of these reductions involve increasing the efficiency of farm operations (e.g. more fuel-efficient equipment) while some involve interruptions in the natural carbon cycle. Also, some effective techniques (such as the elimination of stubble burning) can negatively impact other environmental concerns (increased herbicide use to control weeds not destroyed by burning).

Deep soil

Soils hold four times the amount of carbon stored in the atmosphere. About half of this is found deep within soils. About 90% of this deep soil C is stabilized by mineral-organic associations.

Reducing emissions

Increasing yields and efficiency generally reduces emissions as well, since more food results from the same or less effort. Techniques include more accurate use of fertilizers, less soil disturbance, better irrigation, and crop strains bred for locally beneficial traits and increased yields.

Replacing more energy intensive farming operations can also reduce emissions. Reduced or no-till farming requires less machine use and burns correspondingly less fuel per acre. However, no-till usually increases use of weed-control chemicals and the residue now left on the soil surface is more likely to release its CO₂ to the atmosphere as it decays, reducing the net carbon reduction.

In practice, most farming operations that incorporate post-harvest crop residues, wastes and byproducts back into the soil provide a carbon storage benefit. This is particularly the case for practices such as field burning of stubble – rather than releasing almost all of the stored CO₂ to the atmosphere, tillage incorporates the biomass back into the soil.

Enhancing carbon removal

All crops absorb CO₂ during growth and release it after harvest. The goal of agricultural carbon removal is to use the crop and its relation to the carbon cycle to permanently sequester carbon within the soil. This is done by selecting farming methods that return biomass to the soil and enhance the conditions in which the carbon within the plants will be reduced to its elemental nature and stored in a stable state. Methods for accomplishing this include:

·         Use cover crops such as grasses and weeds as temporary cover between planting seasons

·         Concentrate livestock in small paddocks for days at a time so they graze lightly but evenly. This encourages roots to grow deeper into the soil. Stock also till the soil with their hooves, grinding old grass and manures into the soil.

·         Cover bare paddocks with hay or dead vegetation. This protects soil from the sun and allows the soil to hold more water and be more attractive to carbon-capturing microbes.

·         Restore degraded land, which slows carbon release while returning the land to agriculture or other use.

Agricultural sequestration practices may have positive effects on soil, air, and water quality, be beneficial to wildlife, and expand food production. On degraded croplands, an increase of 1 ton of soil carbon pool may increase crop yield by 20 to 40 kilograms per hectare of wheat, 10 to 20 kg/ ha for maize, and 0.5 to 1 kg/ha for cowpeas.

The effects of soil sequestration can be reversed. If the soil is disrupted or tillage practices are abandoned, the soil becomes a net source of greenhouse gases. Typically after 15 to 30 years of sequestration, soil becomes saturated and ceases to absorb carbon. This implies that there is a global limit to the amount of carbon that soil can hold.

Many factors affect the costs of carbon sequestration including soil quality, transaction costs and various externalities such as leakage and unforeseen environmental damage. Because reduction of atmospheric CO₂ is a long-term concern, farmers can be reluctant to adopt more expensive agricultural techniques when there is not a clear crop, soil, or economic benefit. Governments such as Australia and New Zealand are considering allowing farmers to sell carbon credits once they document that they have sufficiently increased soil carbon content.

Ocean-related

Iron fertilization

Ocean iron fertilization is an example of such a geoengineering technique. Iron fertilization attempts to encourage phytoplankton growth, which removes carbon from the atmosphere for at least a period of time. This technique is controversial due to limited understanding of its complete effects on the marine ecosystem, including side effects and possibly large deviations from expected behavior. Such effects potentially include release of nitrogen oxides, and disruption of the ocean's nutrient balance.

Natural iron fertilisation events (e.g., deposition of iron-rich dust into ocean waters) can enhance carbon sequestration. Sperm whales act as agents of iron fertilisation when they transport iron from the deep ocean to the surface during prey consumption and defecation. Sperm whales have been shown to increase the levels of primary production and carbon export to the deep ocean by depositing iron rich feces into surface waters of the Southern Ocean. The iron rich feces causes phytoplankton to grow and take up more carbon from the atmosphere. When the phytoplankton dies, some of it sinks to the deep ocean and takes the atmospheric carbon with it. By reducing the abundance of sperm whales in the Southern Ocean, whaling has resulted in an extra 200,000 tonnes of carbon remaining in the atmosphere each year.

Urea fertilization

Fertilizing the ocean with urea, a nitrogenrich substance, to encourage phytoplankton growth. Australian company Ocean Nourishment Corporation (ONC) plans to sink hundreds of tonnes of urea into the ocean to boost CO₂-absorbing phytoplankton growth as a way to combat climate change. In 2007, Sydney-based ONC completed an experiment involving 1 tonne of nitrogen in the Sulu Sea off the Philippines.

Mixing layers

Encouraging various ocean layers to mix can move nutrients and dissolved gases around, offering avenues for geoengineering. Mixing may be achieved by placing large vertical pipes in the oceans to pump nutrient rich water to the surface, triggering blooms of algae, which store carbon when they grow and export carbon when they die. This produces results somewhat similar to iron fertilization. One side-effect is a short-term rise in CO₂, which limits its attractiveness.

Seaweed

Seaweed grows very fast and can theoretically be harvested and processed to generate biomethane, via Anaerobic Digestion to generate electricity, via Cogeneration/CHP or as a replacement for natural gas. If seaweed farms covered 9% of the ocean they could produce enough biomethane to supply Earth's equivalent demand for fossil fuel energy, remove 53 giga tonnes of CO₂ per year from the atmosphere and sustainably produce 200 kg per year of fish, per person, for 10 billion people. Ideal species for such farming and conversion include Laminaria digitata, Fucus serratus and Saccharina latissima.

Physical processes

Biomass-related

Bio-energy with carbon capture and storage

Bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) refers to biomass in power stations and boilers that use carbon capture and storage. The carbon sequestered by the biomass would be captured and stored, thus removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

This technology is sometimes referred to as bio-energy with carbon storage, BECS, though this term can also refer to the carbon sequestration potential in other technologies, such as biochar.

Burial

Burying biomass (such as trees) directly, mimics the natural processes that created fossil fuels. Landfills also represent a physical method of sequestration.

Biochar burial

Biochar is charcoal created by pyrolysis of biomass waste. The resulting material is added to a landfill or used as a soil improver to create terra preta. Addition of pyrogenic organic carbon (biochar) is a novel strategy to increase the soil-C stock for the long-term and to mitigate global-warming by offsetting the atmospheric C (up to 9.5 Pg C annually).

In the soil, the carbon is unavailable for oxidation to CO₂ and consequential atmospheric release. This is one technique advocated by scientist James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis. According to Simon Shackley, "people are talking more about something in the range of one to two billion tonnes a year."

The mechanisms related to biochar are referred to as bio-energy with carbon storage, BECS.

 

Ocean storage

If CO₂ were to be injected to the ocean bottom, the pressures would be great enough for CO₂ to be in its liquid phase. The idea behind ocean injection would be to have stable, stationary pools of CO₂ at the ocean floor. The ocean could potentially hold over a thousand billion tons of CO₂. However, this avenue of sequestration isn't being as actively pursued because of concerns about the impact on ocean life, and concerns about its stability.

River mouths bring large quantities of nutrients and dead material from upriver into the ocean as part of the process that eventually produces fossil fuels. Transporting material such as crop waste out to sea and allowing it to sink exploits this idea to increase carbon storage. International regulations on marine dumping may restrict or prevent use of this technique.

Geological sequestration

The method of geo-sequestration or geological storage involves injecting carbon dioxide directly into underground geological formations. Declining oil fields, saline aquifers, and unminable coal seams have been suggested as storage sites. Caverns and old mines that are commonly used to store natural gas are not considered, because of a lack of storage safety.

CO₂ has been injected into declining oil fields for more than 40 years, to increase oil recovery. This option is attractive because the storage costs are offset by the sale of additional oil that is recovered. Typically, 10–15% additional recovery of the original oil in place is possible. Further benefits are the existing infrastructure and the geophysical and geological information about the oil field that is available from the oil exploration. Another benefit of injecting CO₂ into Oil fields is that CO₂ is soluble in oil. Dissolving CO₂ in oil lowers the viscosity of the oil and reduces its interfacial tension which increases the oils mobility. All oil fields have a geological barrier preventing upward migration of oil. As most oil and gas has been in place for millions to tens of millions of years, depleted oil and gas reservoirs can contain carbon dioxide for millennia.

Identified possible problems are the many 'leak' opportunities provided by old oil wells, the need for high injection pressures and acidification which can damage the geological barrier. Other disadvantages of old oil fields are their limited geographic distribution and depths, which require high injection pressures for sequestration. Below a depth of about 1000 m, carbon dioxide is injected as a supercritical fluid, a material with the density of a liquid, but the viscosity and diffusivity of a gas. Unminable coal seams can be used to store CO₂, because CO₂ absorbs to the coal surface, ensuring safe long-term storage. In the process it releases methane that was previously adsorbed to the coal surface and that may be recovered. Again the sale of the methane can be used to offset the cost of the CO₂storage.

 Release or burning of methane would of course at least partially offset the obtained sequestration result – except when the gas is allowed to escape into the atmosphere in significant quantities: methane has a higher global warming potential than CO₂.

Saline aquifers contain highly mineralized brines and have so far been considered of no benefit to humans except in a few cases where they have been used for the storage of chemical waste. Their advantages include a large potential storage volume and relatively common occurrence reducing the distance over which CO₂ has to be transported.

The major disadvantage of saline aquifers is that relatively little is known about them compared to oil fields. Another disadvantage of saline aquifers is that as the salinity of the water increases, less CO₂ can be dissolved into aqueous solution. To keep the cost of storage acceptable the geophysical exploration may be limited, resulting in larger uncertainty about the structure of a given aquifer. Unlike storage in oil fields or coal beds, no side product will offset the storage cost. Leakage of CO₂ back into the atmosphere may be a problem in saline-aquifer storage. However, current research shows that several trapping mechanisms immobilize the CO₂ underground, reducing the risk of leakage.

Chemical processes

Developed in the Netherlands, an electrocatalysis by a copper complex helps reduce carbon dioxide to oxalic acid; This conversion uses carbon dioxide as a feedstock to generate oxalic acid.

Industrial use

Traditional cement manufacture releases large amounts of carbon dioxide, but newly developed cement types from Novacem can absorb CO₂ from ambient air during hardening. A similar technique was pioneered by TecEco, which has been producing "EcoCement" since 2002. A Canadian startup CarbonCure takes captured CO₂ and injects it into concrete as it's being mixed. Carbon Upcycling UCLAis another company that uses CO₂ in concrete. Their concrete product is called CO2NCRETE, a concrete that hardens faster and is more eco-friendly than traditional concrete.

In Estonia, oil shale ash, generated by power stations could be used as sorbents for CO₂ mineral sequestration. The amount of CO₂ captured averaged 60 to 65% of the carbonaceous CO₂ and 10 to 11% of the total CO₂ emissions.

Chemical scrubbers

Various carbon dioxide scrubbing processes have been proposed to remove CO₂ from the air, usually using a variant of the Kraft process. Carbon dioxide scrubbing variants exist based on potassium carbonate, which can be used to create liquid fuels, or on sodium hydroxide. These notably include artificial trees proposed by Klaus Lackner to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using chemical scrubbers.

Ocean-related

Basalt storage

Carbon dioxide sequestration in basalt involves the injecting of CO₂ into deep-sea formations. The CO₂ first mixes with seawater and then reacts with the basalt, both of which are alkaline-rich elements. This reaction results in the release of Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺ ions forming stable carbonate minerals.

Underwater basalt offers a good alternative to other forms of oceanic carbon storage because it has a number of trapping measures to ensure added protection against leakage. These measures include “geochemical, sediment, gravitational and hydrate formation.” Because CO₂ hydrate is denser than CO₂in seawater, the risk of leakage is minimal. Injecting the CO₂ at depths greater than 2,700 meters (8,900 ft) ensures that the CO₂ has a greater density than seawater, causing it to sink.

Acid neutralization

Carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid when dissolved in water, so ocean acidification is a significant consequence of elevated carbon dioxide levels, and limits the rate at which it can be absorbed into the ocean (the solubility pump). A variety of different bases have been suggested that could neutralize the acid and thus increase CO₂ absorption. For example, adding crushed limestone to oceans enhances the absorption of carbon dioxide. Another approach is to add sodium hydroxide to oceans which is produced by electrolysisof salt water or brine, while eliminating the waste hydrochloric acid by reaction with a volcanic silicate rock such as enstatite, effectively increasing the rate of natural weathering of these rocks to restore ocean pH.