• Question: Where do we put all the carbon?

    Asked by Coco to Shuo, Martin, Leonie, Lauren, Ciorsdaidh, Alan on 5 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      The best thing would be not to put it anywhere but to re-use the carbon dioxide (I’m assuming that’s what you mean by carbon) as a feed-stock for industry. In the short term this might mean storing it down old oil wells but in the longer term, we have to find ways and means of using it to make useful chemicals. This will likely require developments in chemistry and biology to be effective. Storage alone is never going to be economic.

    • Photo: Ciorsdaidh Watts

      Ciorsdaidh Watts answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      Goos question because carbon is perhaps the most fundamental element for life on the planet. All living organisms are made up of carbon. In fact “Organic Chemistry” is the chemistry of carbon. So in this sense carbon is already all around us and is fully recyclable!

    • Photo: Alan McCue

      Alan McCue answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      Brilliant question and one of the big problems we have to address at the moment (i.e., scientists are working hard to try and solve). Like Martin, I would assume you mean carbon dioxide. We produce this from a variety of activities such as heating our homes or driving cars. The challenge is to stop this carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. The idea which is currently popular is ‘carbon capture’ so capturing it and storing is (perhaps in an empty oil well as Martin says). How do we make use of it. Well if the is going to be an answer to this then we need to find a good catalyst which can convert carbon dioxide into something else. One of the popular ideas at the moment is to try and convert carbon dioxide in methanol and use this as a fuel. There is a lot of discussion between scientists as to whether or not this is a good idea. Truthfully we haven’t decided yet. But watch this space the answer is coming :-). Awesome question Coco!

Comments

  • Photo: Neil

    Neil commented on :

    There are projects around the world looking to utilise carbon dioxide to make biofuels through algae fermentations (the algae will take in the carbon dioxide through photosynthesis to make food). They are not on a big enough commercial scale yet, but they’re coming.

    In the meantime, I think we should be doing more to look at carbon capture and storage (probably in old oil and gas wells in the North Sea) to reduce the amount in the atmosphere while we come up with a better method of handling it. This way we would at least reduce the nasty effect global warming is having on the planet.