CO2 captured from factories and power stations will have a distinctive chemical fingerprint, based on its origin, the study found. Scientists are confident that their research will help further the development of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology.
At present, CO2 is stored deep underground and is marked with expensive chemical tracers, which monitor the containment of the gas. Now that the origin of any sample of CO2 can be identified, whether it has come from an industrial source or a natural one, such as respiring plants and bacteria, the need to trace the gas is removed.
The scientists discovered that the fingerprint of the gas was dictated by the fuel that produced it, and the technology that was used to capture it prior to storage.
Dr Stuart Gilfillan, the study’s co-ordinator and part of the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh, said: “There has been a pressing need to identify a means to distinguish CO2 to be stored from that already in the subsurface to help CCS deployment. Our study… paves the way for natural fingerprints to be used to track the CO2 once it is injected underground for storage.”
The study was published in Environmental Science and Technology and was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
