Geological Carbon Sequestration: A New Approach for Near-Surface Assurance Monitoring

Lucian Wielopolski
Additional contact information
Lucian Wielopolski: Environmental Science Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Bldg. 490, Upton, NY 11973, USA

IJERPH, 2011, vol. 8, issue 3, 1-12

Abstract: There are two distinct objectives in monitoring geological carbon sequestration (GCS): Deep monitoring of the reservoir’s integrity and plume movement and near-surface monitoring (NSM) to ensure public health and the safety of the environment. However, the minimum detection limits of the current instrumentation for NSM is too high for detecting weak signals that are embedded in the background levels of the natural variations, and the data obtained represents point measurements in space and time. A new approach for NSM, based on gamma-ray spectroscopy induced by inelastic neutron scatterings (INS), offers novel and unique characteristics providing the following: (1) High sensitivity with a reducible error of measurement and detection limits, and, (2) temporal- and spatial-integration of carbon in soil that results from underground CO 2 seepage. Preliminary field results validated this approach showing carbon suppression of 14% in the first year and 7% in the second year. In addition the temporal behavior of the error propagation is presented and it is shown that for a signal at the level of the minimum detection level the error asymptotically approaches 47%.

Keywords: carbon; monitoring; geological sequestration; spectroscopy; neutrons; gamma-rays; errors; minimum detectable limits (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/8/3/818/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/8/3/818/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:8:y:2011:i:3:p:818-829:d:11659

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().