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Geo-sequestering is insane. It doesn't make EROEI sense and it does not make business sense. There is no business case for it, so businesses cannot do it (at least not while shareholders are investing their money with the intention of getting a financial return).
There is an alternative form of sequestering that has a business case: Sequestering by feeding the CO2 to a fast-growing organism (such as algae) and then harvesting the organism to produce bio-fuels and bio-char (which is sequestered).
I personally don't see sequestration happening in a big way either, once the decline begins we will need every ounce of EROI we can get. I don't see us 'wasting' 10-15% (estimate) of energy on sequestrating carbon when we are faced with an energy crisis.
The algae thing could be promising. This is pretty much how all the oil got down there in the first place isn't it -fast growing sea organisms sucking up the carbon during hot house periods, ocean anoyxia trapping the sinking lifeforms below some sea boundary. Topped with silt, buried, cooked and sucked back up by Mankind millions of years later, nice.
Biotechnology could enhance organisms to produce a greater % of oily output, huge offshore algael blooms could then be harvested. Well its possible in theory anyway but it won't stop the next 25 years being tough. I think we have only scratched the surface of what the sea could provide mankind.
Nick.
The magic word is cooked. Mother Nature converted geothermal energy into oil energy when making oil 100-200 million years ago. If we have to supply that energy ourselves, it is tough to get >1.5 EROI. They've just breached the 1 EROI barrier in the lab.
RobertInTucson
I haven't escaped from reality. I have a daypass.
Actually Mother Nature was very inneficient too -check this piece out:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-10/uou-bm9102603.php
-98 tons of biomass per gallon of Gas...!
It's only because there was such a huge amount of stuff to start with that we get anything out. As the bottom of the article says modern processes can be more efficient. I believe Cane Sugar has a higher EROI (around 8?)
What we need is an efficient way to take the algae and concentrate it by extracting the water -possibly by using a solar furnace to boil away the water content.
I think the main take-away from the article is that we have been living in an age where we are saturated with almost free energy and in future we will be forced to appreciate the value of that energy much much more. And I am also coming to think that it means an end to many of the things we now take for granted and we are heading rapidly towards some sort of 'chaotic boundary'/'phase change' -call it what you will. I am loathe to say "the signs are all around us" as that is too close to what a religous nut might tell you about Doomsday -but they are aren't they?! :o)
Regards, Nick.
If you aren't putting close to 100% of the carbon into the char, you're not really sequestering. This leaves nothing to go into the bio-fuels.
A sustainable system starts with biomass and turns some of it into char which is sequestered. This is carbon-negative.