Would Carbon Sequestration remove enough Oxygen from the atmosphere to change climate

[gribbon]

I was just wondering: If clean coal technology were to be employed on a massive scale, wouldn't all the Oxygen in the CO2 produced (which ends up underground or elsewhere) lead to a change in Climate or plant growth? I couldn't find anything on the internet which supported this, but does anyone know?

[jackson33]

I was just wondering: If clean coal technology were to be employed on a massive scale, wouldn't all the Oxygen in the CO2 produced (which ends up underground or elsewhere) lead to a change in Climate or plant growth? I couldn't find anything on the internet which supported this, but does anyone know?

 

not sure of question; coal has to burn or be used to create CO2. in ground coal is just that. a substance in the ground.

 

if man somehow didn't exist, CO2 has plenty of ways to form and feed the plants, so to speak. forest fires, volcanoes and decaying of matter have been doing this job hundreds of million years before man. even today with all the hype on mans effect, is less than the 5% of total harmful elements, which are said to cause a problem. i might add that all natures 95% with mans 5% totals to less than --1-- percent of our atmosphere. 77 is nitrogen and 22 is good old oxygen....

[CraigD]

I was just wondering: If clean coal technology were to be employed on a massive scale, wouldn't all the Oxygen in the CO2 produced (which ends up underground or elsewhere) lead to a change in Climate or plant growth?

I don’t think so.

 

Although various grades of coal contain some hydrogen, oxygen, and other elements, they are mostly carbon (from 66 to 98% by mass). Even the lowest grade coals appear to have a carbon : oxygen ratio much higher than 1:2, so the CO2 produced by burning them in the atmosphere doesn’t add, but removes oxygen from the atmosphere. We can see this on a small scale by burning nearly anything in a sealed container, and noting that the combustion quickly removes so much oxygen that it can no longer continue.

 

“Carbon sequestration” usually means removing carbon combustion products from the atmosphere into something else, such as plants tissue, or chemical compounds, such as hydrocarbons. In most cases, CO2 subjected to carbon sequestration techniques release some or most of its oxygen into the atmosphere – The CO2 isn’t simply stored forever in large containers, such as empty oil wells, but has its carbon “stripped”.

 

The wiki links above appear to provide a decent, but not very detailed, description of the chemistry and processes involved.

[gribbon]

But unless there is the Oxygen in the Coal to produce CO2 without any additonal Oxygen, then doesn't that mean that we end up draining Oxygen from the atmosphere?

[CraigD]

But unless there is the Oxygen in the Coal to produce CO2 without any additonal Oxygen, then doesn't that mean that we end up draining Oxygen from the atmosphere?

Burning, rusting, or otherwise bonding atmospheric oxygen into molecules other than O2 removes oxygen from the atmosphere, yes. Freeing oxygen from these molecules adds oxygen to the atmosphere – when the molecule in question is CO or CO2, this could be called “carbon sequestration”. There isn’t much oxygen in any sort of coal, so burning it requires oxygen from some source, usually the atmosphere.

 

I don’t think adding or removing oxygen from the atmosphere in the quantities human use involves has a very significant effect on climate. One reason is that the atmosphere has a lot of oxygen – about 21% of its [math]5 \times 10^{18}[/math] kg mass, vs. 0.04% and 0.07% for CO2 and CO, respectively. Another is that oxygen doesn’t trap heat – it’s not a “greenhouse gas”, and even if it was, it’s hard to imagine human activity affecting the amount of atmospheric oxygen enough to have a noticeable effect (source: wikipedia article Earth’s atmosphere).

 

CO2, on the other hand, exists in a small enough quantity in the atmosphere that natural and manmade chemical reactions – burning, rusting, etc – apparently can have a noticeable affect on its total quantity, and CO2 is a strong greenhouse gas. So, by “tweaking” atmospheric CO2, and other uncommon molecules with strong greenhouse or other climatologically significant effects, such as ozone (O3) or water (H2O), we humans have an appreciable ability to effect climate. As I’ve noted in previous posts, this is not inherently a bad capability, but it is one that we’d be wise to understand well, and use to our benefit, rather than denying in the face of strong scientific evidence. The belief that “humans are too small to effect big things, like climate”, as some argue, is not supported by scientific evidence.

[DougF]

I'm not sure how I can read this being it's September 1, 2007 Today?

but it's a good read on Carbon Sequestration anyway.

 

High Country News -- September 3, 2007: A Climate Change Solution?

A Climate Change Solution?FEATURE ARTICLE - September 3' date=' 2007 by Valerie Brown

 

Basalt rock in the Columbia River Basin. Scientists are about to test whether basalt could permanently hold carbon captured from coal power plants. RAJAH BOSE

Beneath the Columbia River Basin, a real-life trial of the uncertain science of carbon sequestration.[/quote']