Nature - Study Shows Buried CO2 Unlikely To Lock Up With Minerals - Stays Gas Or Dissolves In H20

[hatrack]

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The researchers compared data on various isotopes sampled from the bubble of gas trapped in the reservoir and found a surprising link between the levels of CO2 and noble gases.

The ratio of CO2 to helium-3 is already known to reveal whether any CO2 has been lost from the reservoir after both gases arrived together from the Earth's mantle. The researchers found that the more CO2 was lost, the higher the concentration of noble gases such as helium-4 and neon-20. The researchers argue that this link shows how much CO2 has dissolved in water, kicking out the noble gases from solution into the gas bubble.

When CO2 dissolves in water it forms carbonic acid. And that in turn may transform into carbonate minerals. The team knew that the heavier isotope of carbon, carbon-13, prefers to precipitate in minerals over the lighter carbon-12. And using the 13C/12C ratio, combined with the isotope data showing how much CO2 had been lost from the original gas bubble, they showed that most of the lost CO2 had dissolved in water and not formed minerals.

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"Geochemists worldwide have been excited about trapping CO2 in minerals, but I think we've known for a long time that it is small stuff for most sedimentary rocks," says Sue Hovorka, a geochemist at the University of Texas, Austin, who has worked on pilot experiments injecting CO2 into saline aquifers. For rocks such as basalts, it could be a different story, she adds.

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http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090401/full/news.2009.226.html

[eppur_se_muova]

1. Well, color me surprised. nt