German researchers start work on experimental underground CO2 storage

Last updated at 17:14 27 February 2007


German researchers are trying to determine whether they can help alleviate global warming by pumping carbon dioxide down a 700-metre (2,300-foot) shaft and storing it underground.

Drilling work is underway on the test shaft at Ketzin, west of Berlin. The Potsdam-based National Research Center for Geosciences, known by its German initials GFZ, is leading the project, with 35 million euros(US$46 million) in European Union funding.

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GFZ chairman Rolf Emmermann said the aim is to store some 60,000 tons of carbon dioxide over the next two years. Pumping of the gas is expected to start in mid-June, and it will be stored in a saline solution in the porous sandstone.

"We are testing ... transitional technology as to how CO2 emissions can be reduced," Emmermann said. "Nothing will escape upward, because the sandstone is covered by two absolutely airtight layers of clay."

With help from another two shafts, the researchers plan to observe how the gas spreads underground and work out whether long-term underground storage of carbon dioxide is feasible.

Emmermann said the amount of gas that the researchers plan to store underground would correspond to the amount that the population of nearby Potsdam - a city of some 144,000 - breathes out in the same period.

He said he does not view underground carbon dioxide storage as a long-term solution to climate change, but as a short-term measure that would buy time to develop energy sources that do not involve carbon dioxide emissions.

Emmermann said the technology has the disadvantages of being expensive and energy-intensive.

GFZ says its project is one of four worldwide exploring the possibilities of carbon dioxide storage, among them an experiment in Tasmania, Australia.

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