November 13th, 2007

By John DeFore

In the first long-term test in America of technology that sounds like either a boon to the environment or the premise of a Japanese monster movie, geologists at the University of Texas in Austin are about to start pumping carbon dioxide into reservoirs of brine underground.

It’s the start of a ten-year feasibility study that was just awarded $38 million in federal funding and will be conducted by U.T.’s Bureau of Economic Geology, part of the Jackson School of Geosciences. The idea is that, in the future, industries that now spew CO2 into the atmosphere might instead “sequester” it underground where it won’t contribute to the greenhouse effect; researchers hope not only to prove that this idea works and is safe, but that it’s economically feasible. They suggest that a single geologic system stretching from Texas to Florida “has the potential to store more than 200 billion tons of CO2 … equal to about 33 years of U.S. CO2 emissions overall at present rates.”

For up to a year and a half, starting this fall, they’ll be injecting one million tons per year into a site near Natchez, Mississippi. “Key issues,” according to the Jackson School, “include estimating the CO2 storage capacity of brine reservoirs, understanding the effects of injection pressure and developing methods for documenting retention of CO2 in the injection zone.”

And, it goes without saying, making sure that any life forms residing in that brine aren’t transformed into hideous monsters by the change in their ecosystem.