How to monitor leaks from underground carbon storage? Use bees, of course
I came across this press release from the U.S. National Energy Technology Laboratory that talks about a “novel” way to monitor whether carbon dioxide is leaking from underground storage sites used for CCS applications.
Researchers co-injected carbion dioxide and chemical tracers into an underground storage site. The tracer makes it possible to differentiate CO2 from the experiment from naturally occurring CO2. They then placed bee hives about 150 metres upwind and downwind of the site, where CO2 from underground was intentionally released as part of the experiment. The idea is that pollen from surrounding flowers would collect the CO2 and be marked by the tracer. As bees gather the pollen, they bring it back to their hives, where researchers collect samples for analysis. If there’s no tracer, there’s presumably no leak.
While a novel idea, I’m not sure I’m comforted by the idea of having bees used to track CO2 leaks over hundreds of years. Also, I wonder if there ever was a major leak whether it would just kill the bees — that to me, is a pretty good sign that something is wrong. Problem is, it would also kill the humans in the area. As a way to pre-test the ability of a site to hold CO2, however, this could be one approach worth employing.
Tags: bees, carbon capture, CCS, National Energy Technology Laboratory, pollen
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
August 18th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Sattelite based spectronomy should do this job just fine. Exact digital or approximate analog monitoring? Gee let me think.