Ocean Crust Identified as Potential Region to Store Decades of Industrial Carbon Dioxide

One of the major environmental threats that the world is facing currently is climate change A team of international scientists who have come up with a challenging idea to combat the increase in atmospheric carbon by storing it in the ocean crust.

In a new finding, researchers at the University of Southampton have identified regions that have the potential to store huge quantity of industrial carbon dioxide. They discovered that the igneous rocks of the upper ocean crust could store large amounts of carbon dioxide.

Burning of fossil fuels like coal and natural gas has greatly increased the concentration of carbon dioxide [CO2] in the atmosphere. The result of over 79 million tons of carbon dioxide is ocean acidification. CO2 is linked with dramatic climatic change. No wonder the climate scientists are obsessed with the increasing carbon dioxide emission.

There are several measures taken by scientists to curb the growing concentration on atmospheric CO2, some of which involved developing technologies at power stations. Since these measure are not that effective, the scientists are on a hunt for some natural technique that could be used to trap the greenhouse gas.

Ocean floor was proposed as a potential region to lock CO2 by Chiara Marieni, PhD, from the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. Marieni proposed this idea after investigating the physical aspects of CO2 in order to develop the global maps of the ocean floor. Doing so, made it easy for the researcher to estimate the location where CO2 could be safely locked.

"We have found regions that have the potential to store decades to hundreds of years of industrial carbon dioxide emissions although the largest regions are far off shore. However, further work is needed in these regions to accurately measure local sediment conditions and sample the basalt beneath before this potential can be confirmed," explained Chiara.

In deep oceans, where temperatures remain low and the water pressure remains high, the primary greenhouse gas CO2 exists as a liquid that is denser than the seawater. After estimating the temperatures in the upper ocean crust the researchers identified the regions in the basalts that can store large quantities of CO2.

The researchers explained stating, "These fractured rocks have high proportions of open space, and over time may also react with the CO2 so that it is locked into solid calcium carbonate, permanently preventing its release into the oceans or atmosphere."

As a precaution, the researchers kept themselves to regions that have an extra shield of thick coat of impermeable sediments that will prevent the gas to escape out. The five potential regions identified include Japan, Siberia, South Africa, Bermuda and Australia. They range in size from nearly half million square kilometers to nearly four million square kilometers.

The finding was documented in Geophysical Research Letters.