Car­bon diox­ide tucked into basalt con­verts to rock

RICH­LAND, Wash. – In fairy tales, magic­al spells can turn people and things to stone. In a desert in south­east­ern Wash­ing­ton state, it’s a chem­ic­al reac­tion that con­verts car­bon diox­ide into stone. Research­ers at the Depart­ment of Energy’s Pacific North­w­est Nation­al Labor­at­ory injec­ted CO₂ into basalt lava flows a half mile under­ground near Wal­lula, Wash. In just two years, it had con­ver­ted to a car­bon­ate min­er­al or sol­id rock accord­ing to res­ults pub­lished today in the journ­al Envir­on­ment­al Sci­ence & Tech­no­logy Let­ters. Con­ven­tion­al wis­dom said it would take thou­sands of years for this to occur. PNNL research­ers thought dif­fer­ently after their lab tests demon­strated that the unique geo­chem­ic­al nature of basalts quickly react with CO₂ to form car­bon­ate min­er­als — some­thing akin to lime­stone. To prove the pro­cess oper­ates the same deep under­ground, they injec­ted nearly 1,000 tons of CO₂ in a field study. The res­ults can help inform the dis­cus­sion about wheth­er the green­house gas can be safely and per­man­ently stored in ancient basalt flows. Read more about the res­ults on EurekAlert! Inter­dis­cip­lin­ary teams at Pacific North­w­est Nation­al Labor­at­ory address many of Amer­ica’s most press­ing issues in energy, the envir­on­ment and nation­al secur­ity through advances in basic and applied sci­ence. Foun­ded in 1965, PNNL employs 4,400 staff and has an annu­al budget of nearly $1 bil­lion. It is man­aged by Bat­telle for the U.S. Depart­ment of Energy’s Office of Sci­ence. As the single largest sup­port­er of basic research in the phys­ic­al sci­ences in the United States, the Office of Sci­ence is work­ing to address some of the most press­ing chal­lenges of our time. For more inform­a­tion on PNNL, vis­it the PNNL News Cen­ter, or fol­low PNNL on Face­book, Google+, Linked­In and Twit­ter. Quelle: pnnl​.gov