City experts team up to fight global warming

EDINBURGH scientists will become world leaders in the fight against global warming by examining ways to lock harmful emissions under the sea.

The Capital's top two universities are to join forces by creating a centre of excellence to monitor the long-term effects of dissolving carbon dioxide in deep sea reservoirs and in porous rock containing oil.

The project has been awarded a £1.5 million grant from the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council, and around 100 scientists are due to work on it.

As well as removing potentially damaging carbon dioxide gas from the atmosphere, the procedure can also squeeze extra oil out of diminishing oil reserves.

The gas, which is extracted from emissions from power stations, is cleaned up and injected into reservoirs deep underground, where it either dissolves in water and is stored underground, or encourages remaining reserves of oil to emerge from rocks into reservoirs and be collected by oil manufacturers.

The nearest site for carbon dioxide storage is oil giant BP's Miller Field between the north coast of Scotland and Norway.

Professor Adrian Todd of the Institute of Petroleum Engineering said the grant would allow Scotland to retain its spot as a top place for research in the fight against global warming.

He said: "There is activity in this field developing in the US and Europe and it is important that Scotland continues to play its part. We are refocusing expertise in petroleum to the issue of global warming."

He said the technique had been used since the 1970s to extract oil, but it is only in recent years that the double effect of storing carbon dioxide has been recognised.

He said: "One of our first projects when the institute was founded in 1975 was to look at oil recovery using carbon dioxide, but increasingly, the focus is turning to the carbon dioxide removal benefits, as global warming becomes more of an issue and the pressure is put on companies to look at the green side. The point of the new centre is to enable researchers to find out what is going on underground and see what is likely to happen in the future."

He said the grant would help to pay for computer simulations of reservoirs which could model the effect of the stored gas over hundreds of years.

He said: "Water containing the gas is acidic and could wear away the stone that is the formation of the reservoir - we just don't know. There's a lot of work needing to be done into the long-term effects of this. It is only one way of getting rid of some carbon dioxide, but it is an important way."

He added: "We also want to inform the general public.

"Some people worry it's like storing nuclear waste and we need to do research to ensure it doesn't escape.

"The grant will fund research for four years, but we hope by then to be sustained by industry."

Other SHEFC grants totalling almost £4m have been awarded to collaborations involving Heriot Watt for research into micro-photonic systems, and Edinburgh University to develop technologies into social and health care at home, and work into improving the conduct of clinical trials in Scotland.

Source: news.scotsman.com