Carbon Sequestration Using a Hypersaline Environment: A New Use for Solar Energy

Abstract

Background

Climate change motivates consideration of alternative energy, including solar energy and conversion of biomass to fuel.

Results

It is suggested here that a more economical way of reducing CO2 emission would be to preserve existing biomass with salt, and perhaps other sterilizing agents. It is found that the required solar energy to produce the salt from ocean water can produce an order of magnitude more mass in salt than the mass of combusted carbon needed to yield an equivalent amount of energy.

Conclusions

Preservation, by salt alone, of biomass in the amount needed to offset global use of fossil fuel - would presently require increasing the world's salt production by an order of magnitude or so. On the other hand, this would require much less area per unit of avoided CO2 emission than converting solar energy directly to electricity.

Full Text

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