SO Weekly

According to an experiment conducted by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), limestone scrubbers installed at natural gas power plants could help reduce carbon emissions as well as lower ocean acidification when a byproduct of the scrubbing process is pumped back into the water. A series of small-scale lab experiments found that seawater and calcium can be used to successfully remove carbon dioxide from a gas-fired plant when combined into a limestone scrubber. The resulting calcium bicarbonate can then be pumped back into the sea where it would benefit marine organisms by helping to offset increased ocean acidification. The process would be most applicable at coastal gas-fired power plants that already use seawater for cooling.

The study appears in the journal  Environmental Science and Technology, click here.