Shell is so impressed with the new approach that it is funding an investigation into its economic feasibility. 'We think it's a promising idea,' says Shell's Gilles Bertherin, a coordinator on the project. 'There are potentially huge environmental benefits from addressing climate change -- and adding calcium hydroxide to seawater will also mitigate the effects of ocean acidification, so it should have a positive impact on the marine environment.'

Adding lime to seawater increases alkalinity, boosting seawater's ability to absorb CO₂ from air and reducing the tendency to release it back again.

However, the idea, which has been bandied about for years, was thought unworkable because of the expense of obtaining lime from limestone and the amount of CO₂ released in the process.

Tim Kruger, a management consultant at London firm Corven is the brains behind the plan to resurrect the lime process. He argues that it could be made workable by locating it in regions that have a combination of low-cost 'stranded' energy considered too remote to be economically viable to exploit -- like flared natural gas or solar energy in deserts -- and that are rich in limestone, making it feasible for calcination to take place on site.

Kruger says: 'There are many such places -- for example, Australia's Nullarbor Plain would be a prime location for this process, as it has 10 000km³ of limestone and soaks up roughly 20MJ/m² of solar irradiation every day.'

The process of making lime generates CO₂, but adding the lime to seawater absorbs almost twice as much CO₂. The overall process is therefore 'carbon negative'.

'This process has the potential to reverse the accumulation of CO₂ in the atmosphere. It would be possible to reduce CO₂ to pre-industrial levels,' Kruger says.

And Professor Klaus Lackner, a researcher in the field from Columbia University, says: 'The theoretical CO₂ balance is roughly right...it is certainly worth thinking through carefully.'

The oceans are already the world's largest carbon sink, absorbing 2bn tonnes of carbon every year. Increasing absorption ability by just a few percent could dramatically increase CO₂ uptake from the atmosphere.

This project is being developed in an open source manner. Further information is available at http://www.cquestrate.com.

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

• Air Quality
• Global Warming
• Environmental Science
• Forest
• Climate
• Atmosphere

• Carbon cycle
• Soil pH
• Ocean acidification
• Limestone
• Tide pool
• Sea water