Carbon sequestration: to bury the CO2 problem...literally

Much that was science fiction at the turn of the 19th century is today mundane reality. So it is hardly surprising that seemingly implausible ways of tackling our greenhouse gas problem are being used more and more by scientists and geo-engineers.

 One such radical method that is being looked at with keen interest is Carbon Sequestration. But before we launch into the details, the irony underlying this technique deserves mention. Much of our greenhouse gases, primarily CO2 comes from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. These carbon rich natural resources are found deep within the stratified layers of rock, often several kilometers deep inside the earth's crust. Technology has enabled man to dig these resources out, use them as sources of energy, and release the principal by-product, i.e. CO2 into the air, vitiating and warming the atmosphere over several decades. Ironically, carbon sequestration works quite literally to put this unwelcome by-product back into the chasms of the earth from where they originated. Confused? Well, put simply, carbon sequestration is the process of pushing large volumes of CO2 into porous rock strata in the crust, where they are trapped by impervious upper rock layers and by virtue of chemical reaction with the compounds of the rocks themselves.

Possible ways of carbon sequestration 

I came across an article by Rachel Meserole in the Yale Scientific Magazine, where I learnt that this process has been in use for quite some time now. At the Sleipner natural gas field located in the North Sea, one million metric tonnes of CO2 has been pumped annually into a porous sandstone layer beneath the ocean. The CO2 displaces the water trapped between the rock particles and gets trapped, thanks to an impermeable layer above. So, evidently, the process is not only sound in principle, it actually works on the ground. Many such subterranean CO2 traps can be found in the form of depleted coal belts, exhausted oil belts etc. The article details many other aspects of carbon sequestration and is a fascinating read. The same article also describes how magnesium rich basalt layers can trap CO2 due the chemical reaction between the magnesium and CO2 to form carbonates like Magnesite. Both methods have their drawbacks and hazards, but proper focussed research could one day make them feasible methods to reduce CO2 in our atmosphere.

Onebluesphere urges that you give it a quick read here: http://www.yalescientific.org/2008/11/an-inconvenient-truth-a-surprisingly-convenient-solution/

Titanium Di Oxide: enemy of smog

A BBC news article on Titanium dioxide brought to my attention the amazing air cleaning properties of this increasingly popular chemical. Apparently TiO2 has the ability to release free electrons on being subjected to ultraviolet rays in sunlight, which in turn helps disintegrate oxides of nitrogen and certain other volatile organic compounds that otherwise connive with smoke to create that hated trademark urban pollutant - smog. This property of TiO2 is now being thoroughly analyzed in laboratories around the world, and the industry has already started using it in making environment friendly building materials. The said article talks about a few construction projects that has been or is planning to use TiO2 coated components, that could end up being active air purifiers.

                                                                     Titanium dioxide

To read the original article, go to the following link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15694973

Economic resurgence at the cost of clean air.

A recent article from the Times news network has talked about a rise in the green house gas emissions of industrialized nations in the west being an indicator of their economies returning partly to health. The United States' net CO2 output was close to 6 billion tonnes back in 2006 when the economy was chugging along sufficiently well, but dropped nearly to 5 billion tonnes when recession hit. The situation was similar east of the Atlantic in the Euro zone. Good news for the environment certainly, but hardly the desirable the way of going green, what with so many people in distress.

Now however things have begun to look up again for the economy, and the wheels of industry have started speeding up. Naturally, fuel consumption is inching higher, pulling emissions with it as expected. So the point has been reached where the amount of pollution we cause has become the litmus test for the economy. The reason onebluesphere finds this worthy of note is that this goes on show how flawed our current development pattern is. We have created a system for ourselves where sustainable development has been banished to the backbenches of human priority, allowing repeated assaults on the fragile environmental balance that we ought to preserve. Not enough is being done in promoting green technologies, not enough investments are being made by governments in alternative energy sources. It is vital that people understand the need for adopting more energy-conserving ways of life, and influence policy decisions to that end. It must be our collective goal to create a world where economic health is no longer achieved at the cost of environmental  health. Onebluesphere urges all readers to spare some time and thought to consider what they can do in their own ways (as talked about in the previous post) to help attain that goal.

                                                                one planet....one chance

                                                             

Ten tips to help you become eco-friendly

It is one thing to talk about the environment and express concern about its degradation. Its quite another to actually get up and do something about it. Luckily for us, one does not need to hit the streets with protest banners against polluting effects of industry to make a difference...they can do things right in their homes to help the green cause. Here are ten simple things you can do to make the world a cleaner and greener place.

1. Turn off the lights when you leave a room. Some estimates suggest that domestic power users can save up to 12% of their monthly power bills by remembering to flick the switch off.

2. Reuse and recycle paper. We often use just one side of a page for writing or taking a print, leaving the other side blank and unused. This can be used later for rough notes and miscellaneous writing. This way we can save a lot of pages, and thus a lot of precious trees.

3. Use cold water to wash clothes. Heating water consumes large amounts of energy, and just piles numbers onto your electricity bill. So use hot water only when unavoidable.

4. Turn off the geyser. Once we are done showering in the morning, we often let the geyser run, going on and off on auto-cut. This uselessly consumes electricity that we would be wise to save by switching the geyser off once we are done in the bathroom.

5. Buy a cloth bag. Far too many times we go shopping for stuff and end up returning with our groceries in plastic bags. If you buy a cloth bag and take it to the market everytime, you will effectively reduce the dependence on non-biodegradable plastics.

6. Go organic. The market place is nowadays full of organic produce that have been grown without the use of environment unfriendly chemical fertilizers. Your choices at the shop will determine the extent of use of such harmful chemicals on our farmlands.

7. Take the train. Whenever possible, take advantage of public transportation systems such as local trains, metros, buses etc. instead of using your own car. Not only will it help cut down on pollution, it will help you save a lot that you would otherwise would have spent on petrol.

8. Switch to CFLs. Traditional incandescent lamps consume far greater power than the new long lasting  CFLs. Use these slightly more expensive lamps to realize long time savings on your electricity bill.

9. Throw the plastic stuff in the bin. When we carelessly litter our roads with plastic packets, wrappers and the like, we help choke our drains and sewers with these impervious pollutants. They can later lead to water logging in the monsoon season, polluting the ground water and posing health problems.

10. Turn off the tap. We often leave our taps running while we are brushing our teeth or shaving. This cumulatively leads to the wastage of huge quantities of potable water. So turn off the tap when not in use and fix the leaky pipes and fixtures to help conserve this precious life giving resource.

Hope you find these tips useful and not too inconvenient. Every step taken by us as a community will help make this planet a greener place for future generation. Onebluesphere invites more such tips from you the reader.  

Oil eating bacteria

The common man seems to worry about oil spills only when they occur, as happened recently in the Gulf of Mexico. However, we should be generally concerned about the ecological toll such spills and other industrial accident can have, since they can lead to the death of thousands of innocent animals and birds alongside causing tremendous habitat destruction.

Oil spill seen from aircraft

While the scientific community is tirelessly at work on mitigating such problems, they need the common man's support and participation if they are to succeed in saving our planet. Recently they took a giant leap forward in the field of oil spill management, which I thought I will share with the readers of onebluesphere, because I think its simply inspiring.

Researchers in the Tulane University, USA have literally engineered bacteria that can feed on and digest oil. Experiments conducted in laboratories on special cultures of this new bio-engineered micro-organism showed that they actively feed on oil in their surrouundings and process it to a harmless end product. If these bacteria can be further studied and adapted for mass cultivation, they could be used in the future for clean up operations of both ocean surface and coastline after oil spills.

                                                            Coast clean-up under way

It really is amazing how innovative solutions can be arrived at if we persist in our examination of new scientific avenues for solving ever more complex environmental problems. The scientists and academicians behind this particular innovation and other such breakthroughs, are leading man's effort in becoming a more responsible caretaker of the planet. They deserve our collective appreciation and moral support. 

To learn more about the oil eating bacteria, check out this link from National Geographic:

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/news/environment-news/nsf-oil-somasundaran-vin.html 

Black screens save power?

Onebluesphere is a blog, so the single most essential tool you need to see its content is a computer. Whenever we use computers, we use some form of visual display units such as conventional CRT monitors, TFT screens, the more recent flat screen LCDs etc. The most elementary idea behind images displayed on such devices is that of light emitting from the many pixels on the screen and creating forms and shapes. Now, light emission naturally requires energy, and its easy to see how more light equals more energy. Bright white images consume a greater quantum of energy than dimmer or darker ones. So, in comparison, a black screen should consume less power than a white one. This view has been held for quite some time, leading to people being urged to switch to softwares and applications that use dark or black displays as opposed to white ones. The webspace is rife with a debate on this, as many webpages are predominantly white, thus supposedly consuming more enrgy. Recently, Google, the "whitest" of all the search engines, has come out with a report stating that the opposite may infact be true for LCDs, which already dominates the VDU market.

It remains to be seen which side is correct, but till there is an absolute undisputed winner, all you user out there who are still hooked to the old fashioned CRT monitors, would be wise to know a bit more about how you can use dark screens to save power. You may try blackle.com (which uses Google's search engine) to do your searches while surfing the net, thus combining the ease and familiarity of a Google search with saving energy. You may just find it to be a refreshingly different experience. 

Body heat for warming buildings?

It has been quite a while since I last posted an article on onebluesphere, for which I apologize. The season has changed since my last article, from a soggy monsoon to a chilly winter. And it is the chill of winter that lays the foundation for this article. The northern half of our one blue sphere is experiencing a harsh winter, with whole swathes of north america and europe covered in snow and whipped by blizzards. People are fighting the cold with whatever means they have, but the Swedes up in the north of europe have found a way to heat a building using nothing but human body heat.

Human beings constantly produce body heat and a significant portion of it is radiated into the air and is effectively lost. Now, according to the BBC, researchers have devised a way of trapping the excess body being emitted by commuters at Stockholm's main train station and using the energy to heat an adjacent building. The whole system is based on the idea of heat transfer, and is plain elegant. According to the scientists involved, the idea behind the system has been in place for a long time, but the innovation they have added is the transfer of the heat energy radiated by the commuters to an adjacent building. This leads to significant cuts in the energy costs of the building concerned, making it both an environment friendly as well as a economy friendly means to meet energy needs.

This unique approach will hopefully find many more takers in the region, which otherwise consume huge quantities of fossil fuels to heat up homes and offices during the winter months. Onebluesphere is all about spreading awareness about this kind of innovation, and hopes that everyone gets inspired by such green technology to strive towards a cleaner and greener earth.

To read the full article on the project, go to : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12137680