Chemie Ingenieur Technik, Vol.75, No.4, 340-348, 2003
Engineering solutions for limiting the increase of carbon dioxide in air
This article describes engineering solutions for limiting the increase of carbon dioxide in air. Fossile power plants are taken as a model for the source of CO2. The global mass balance shows that the oceans play a most important role in the storage of the CO2. The hypothesis is that it is not the absolute value of carbon dioxide concentration that is the real problem but rather its change. Keeping this in mind the present emissions should not be converted but stored for future times. This strategy is called "hiding the CO2". The reduction of the emission is not very likely. It is believed that present actions to reduce the private power consumption will not really change the situation. A number of strategies for the sequestration of CO2 are reported in the contribution. One proposal is to use shallow waters which form a thermohaline current for the sequestration. In this case, the injection Of CO2 is quite simple but the carbon dioxide travels hundreds of years in a deep sea current. Several scenarios are discussed for the fate of this CO2-enriched current. The environmental impact is briefly reported. This contribution describes the actual research needs, taking into account that similar research in Japan and in the U.S. is much more developed.