I’ll provide just one link, because otherwise the comment goes to moderation. Here are ‘posters’ which explain ‘ex situ’ enahnced, uncontrolled weathering. It is correct except that by using a tropical site for the dunite (olivine), the price (according to Olaf Schuiling) will be about $15 per tonne of CO2 removed:

ftp://ftp.geog.uu.nl/ pub/ posters/ 2008/ Let_the_earth_help_us_to_save_the_earth-Schuiling_June2008.pdf

I’m still working on my paper which modifies this to use controlled reactions, hence could in principal be done where-ever suitable rock masses exist near the surface. (Also, wikipedia seems to have done quite a good job of picking up on this; see the olivine page there.)

The ‘in situ” method has recently been proposed, nothing more. Searching for “periodite Oman in situ” ought to turn up suitable references. This technique perhaps requires some form of carbon capture. If not, it will certainly be the least expensive. (Follow up is at the peridotite page on Wikipedia.)

Rather amazingly, I estimate that if biomass which is 1/3 carbon can be obtained for $60 per tonne at a digester, the whole operation runs at a profit by selling biomethane at $5/(28 m^3), a price below the current US natural gas spot price of $5.826/(28 m^3). That is, one can make some money while permanently removing carbon diioxide.

An example of CCS running now at pilot scale, i.e. 30 MW, is the Schwarze Pumpe station in Germany. That is an interesting plant because they burn coal in pure O2 and just cool and compress the nearly pure CO2 exhaust without having to separate it from nitrogen. They are aiming for greater than 95% capture. A good summary of the CCS literature remains the IPCC Special Report on Carbon Capture and Storage, as is the MIT The Future of Coal study, as is the more recent McKinsey report CCS Assessing the Economics report.

All parts of the technology exist at commercial full scale in other industries. It is a mistake campaigners are making to oppose implementation of a pollution control technology or claim that it does not exist, rather than to advocate that industry be forced to install it or go out of business. Its weird to listen to industry arguments such as oh my god this will cost too much, this is just not feasible now, it will be too hard to develop, its too dangerous, etc coming out of the mouths of environmental campaigners regarding a pollution control technology.

From what I gather as I study Stephen Chu, Obama’s appointee to head the DOE, he agrees the CCS technology is ready to be implemented at full scale as Obama campaigned on (five full scale plants) and his main reservation is not about the cost of the capture, but that the storage of CO2 will be a challenge on the legal front from NIMBY attacks, as well as it needs to be carefully studied as it is implemented to verify that it indeed stays underground as the scale is ramped up. Chu really doesn’t like coal power, for all the usually cited reasons, especially the radiation emissions, but he signs off recommending coal power with CCS as he did in the IAC “Lighting the Way” report he co-chaired, perhaps because of the importance of coal for the developing world, and the importance what the developing world does has for us. We need to prove out CCS if only to transfer the technology to the developing world so what they do with coal doesn’t finish us off. The UNDP has mentioned that if the developed world does not come up with CCS and finance the transfer of the technology to the developing world an international agreement to limit emissions will not be possible.

My back of the envelope calculation on land reclamation cost per barrel in the tar sand area was done this way:

Apparently, the 170 billion barrels of proven reserve is 80% located in a 3,400 square km area. This gives 136 billion barrels divided by 340,000 hectares which gives 400,000 barrels per hectare. $130,000, the Pembina figure quoted by Greenpeace for reclamation, for one hectare, divided by 400,000 barrels gives 32.5 cents per barrel to reclaim.

I was a bit astonished to see it work out this way. I state the 32.5 cents as “less than $1 a barrel” to hedge the figure a bit as it seems so preposterously low to me. I put it forward as food for thought, and let’s see someone contradict it with better figures. All I did was do a bit of searching with Google and some simple math. I’m tired of rhetoric that would say there is this impossibly huge problem – I want to see figures expressed in terms I can understand, in this case, cost per barrel of oil produced to reclaim the land. I found no one was putting figures in this format forward, so I attempted to produce a figure myself.

I’m researching the tar sands still, which was the reason I bought Nikiforuk’s book and read it. I was disappointed with it as a source for reliable information and said so in case anyone was interested.

This lethal CO2 line of Nikiforuk’s is just one example of his rhetoric. The book is full of this kind of what I think is overblown rhetoric: buy it and read it, if you don’t agree with my observation, you’ll love the book. Coupled with the contradictions, this book is just not my cup of tea.

So how much does CCS cost today? How about an example of a commercial process that is running today, that would be a great source of data. Oh wait, there are none. Hmm, wonder why?

And certainly $1 per barrel will pay for land reclamation. Umm, how do you come up with that?

And obviously CO2 is not a problem because a writer used a scary analogy to represent the amount being produced.

Lame, lame lame. You’ll have to do better than that.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15250836/

Does not seem to be that much progress in only two years.

Overblown: “”many tar sand projects puff out nearly a million tons of carbon dioxide a year…. … a million tons – a megaton – is enough lethal carbon dioxide to fill one million two-storey, three-bedroom homes and suffocate every occupant”. If you like writing like this you’ll love this book. I don’t know how the exhaust streams from tar sands processing plants could ever fill one home and suffocate one occupant, but this is what he’s written. I believe he’s trying to associate CO2 with other lethal waste products such as high level nuclear waste, as many who oppose carbon capture do, but who knows. If you piled a million tons of Nikiforuk’s books high enough and they all fell on an apartment block, no doubt someone would die, but is this relevant?

Inaccurate and contradictory: He states it “will cost anywhere from $10 billion to $16 billion” to “inject twenty megatons” of CO2, which works out by my calculation as $500 to $800 a ton. No one in the rest of the world publishes figures like this. Not much farther on, he cites another source which according to my calculations is $400 a ton, then he blithely moves on to the IPCC citing $25 to $115 a ton. All this in the space of a few pages.

Carbon capture according to Nikiforuk, “defies economics”, and is “morally bankrupt”. Personally, I prefer cost figures to be put into terms I can understand, such as cost in dollars per barrel of tar sand oil processed from the tar sands, and I don’t care about the moral bankruptcy of removing a pollutant from a waste stream, I care if it is possible and if it will prove to be economic.

Its funny how the anti carbon capture types want us to listen to the scientists, i.e. the IPCC, and decide we should do something about climate change, but they then don’t want us to listen to scientists, i.e. the IPCC, who call for limiting emissions by capturing carbon. I don’t know what Nikiforuk’s record is as a climate campaigner.

Regarding all the ballyhoo about how mining the tar sands causes terrible destruction, I did a back of the envelope calculation about how much it would cost to reclaim the land after mining. Greenpeace cites a study that says it cost $130,000, I think CDN dollars, to reclaim one hectare, as if this implies it would be impossible to pay this much given how much land is being distrurbed. I came out with a figure of less than $1 per barrel of oil produced, if industry was forced to set aside that much per hectare of land it mined in a fund for restoration. This puts the issue into a different perspective, for me, as it is a failure of regulation rather than a product of mining.