Friday, November 07, 2008
A Rock Found in Oman Can Soak Up CO2
Timothy Gardner reports:A rock found mostly in Oman can be harnessed to soak up the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide at a rate that could help slow global warming, scientists say.
When carbon dioxide comes in contact with the rock, peridotite, the gas is converted into solid minerals such as calcite.
Geologist Peter Kelemen and geochemist Juerg Matter said the naturally occurring process can be supercharged 1 million times to grow underground minerals that can permanently store 2 billion or more of the 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted by human activity every year.
Their study will appear in the November 11 edition of the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences.
Peridotite is the most common rock found in the Earth's mantle, or the layer directly below the crust. It also appears on the surface, particularly in Oman, which is conveniently close to a region that produces substantial amounts of carbon dioxide in the production of fossil fuels.
"To be near all that oil and gas infrastructure is not a bad thing," Matter said in an interview.
They also calculated the costs of mining the rock and bringing it directly to greenhouse gas emitting power plants, but determined it was too expensive.
The scientists, who are both at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, say they have kick-started peridotite's carbon storage process by boring down and injecting it with heated water containing pressurized carbon dioxide. They have a preliminary patent filing for the technique.
They say 4 billion to 5 billion tons a year of the gas could be stored near Oman by using peridotite in parallel with another emerging technique developed by Columbia's Klaus Lackner that uses synthetic "trees" which suck carbon dioxide out of the air.
More research needs to be done before either technology could be used on a commercial scale.
Peridotite also occurs in the Pacific islands of Papua New Guinea and Caledonia, and along the coast of the Adriatic Sea and in smaller amounts in California.
All About Syria: Damascus Reaches Out to 'Abu Hussein' Obama, While China Invests in Syrian Oil
Foreign Confidential....
Is Syria playing a game of good-cop-bad-cop ... or offering the United States and Israel real opportunities for peace?
Yoav Stern reports "Syria would be prepared to restrain the militant activities of Hezbollah and Hamas if a U.S. administration led by President-elect Barack Obama shifts its policy toward Damascus, according to a state analyst in Damascus."
Stern:In an article published on Friday on the Asia Times Web site, Syrian analyst Sami Mubayed called on Obama to endorse the renewed peace talks with Israel to ensure their success.
Mubayed, whose analyses are considered the official standpoint of the Syrian government, urged Obama to "normalize" relations between Washington and Damascus.
Such "normalization" of ties would include dispatching a new U.S. ambassador to Damascus, the first since the deterioration of the states' ties in 2005.
Click here to read Mubayed's article, in which he explains that Syrians call Obama "Abu Hussein," and here to read Mubayed's other article, headlined "Syrians Stare Terror in the Face."
And be sure to click here to read about China's burgeoning relationship with Syria and other Middle Eastern states. An excerpt:Reflecting the pattern of Beijing's relations elsewhere in the region, Chinese oil giants have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Syria in recent years to modernize the country's aging oil and gas infrastructure, and have entered into joint ventures with Syrian energy firms in the areas of oil and gas exploration and oil refinement.
In a recent development, the China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec) announced its US$2 billion purchase of Canada's Tanganyika Oil Co Ltd, a firm with major operating interests in Syria's oil industry. Chinese investments in Syria also encompass the electricity, construction, telecommunications, agriculture, transport and tourism sectors.
In an effort to further boost Chinese investment in Syria, Damascus has proposed the creation of a Chinese Industrial Zone and a China Telecom Park. The bilateral trade volume between both countries reached $1.87 billion in 2007, up almost 33% from 2006, a figure that is expected to double by 2011. China has since become Syria's single-largest trading partner. To demonstrate the rapid expansion of Sino-Syrian trade relations, the bilateral trade volume in 2000 was only $174 million. Despite this impressive expansion in trade, the overall volume of Sino-Syrian trade remains relatively small compared with China's trade relations elsewhere in the region.
Friday, 7 November 2008
Foreign Confidential....
Posts
