Even if chemistries wasn’t you favorite class in high school you probably know a little about acids and bases. Scientists have found a way to reverse the effects of ocean acidification and by doing so reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere. How will they do it? By adding lime a.k.a calcium hydroxide to seawater.

Adding lime to seawater increases alkalinity, boosting seawater’s ability to absorb CO2 from air and reducing the tendency to release it back again.

This idea was brought forward quite a few years back but was thought unworkable because of the extravagant expense of obtaining lime from limestone and the amount of CO2 released in the process.

Tim Kruger, a management consultant at London firm Corven believes that it could be workable by locating it in regions that have a combination of low-cost ’stranded’ energy considered too remote to be economically viable to exploit – like flared natural gas or solar energy in deserts – and that are rich in limestone, making it feasible for calcination to take place on site.

There are many such places – for example, Australia’s Nullarbor Plain would be a prime location for this process, as it has 10 000km3 of limestone and soaks up roughly 20MJ/m2 of solar irradiation every day.

Even if the process of making the lime creates CO2, twice as much is absorbed by adding the lime to seawater. This means that the overall process is “carbon negative”.

I think someone paid attention in is chemistry class!

Via: scienceblog.com