Montana State U. scientists to lead $67 million experiment to see if greenhouse gases can be locked underground
Bozeman Daily Chronicle
July 27, 2011
In probably the biggest research project Montana State University has ever undertaken, MSU scientists will lead a $67 million, eight-year experiment to find out if greenhouse gases can be successfully locked underground.
The U.S. Department of Energy has approved the project, which calls for pumping 1 million tons of carbon dioxide into porous rocks almost a mile underground in northern Montana, near the Canadian border.
"We've been working to put this together for a long time, so it's gratifying," Lee Spangler, MSU's associate vice president of research, said Tuesday.
Spangler is also director of the Big Sky Carbon Sequestration Partnership, which is in charge of the project.
America relies on coal, and Gov. Brian Schweitzer has called Montana "the Saudi Arabia of coal." State leaders are keen to find ways to reduce the greenhouse gases released by burning coal in power plants and thus realize the dream of "clean coal." If it works, capturing CO2 underground could be a major solution and reduce coal's contribution to climate change.
Scientists think the rock formation that extends from northern and eastern Montana into North Dakota and Saskatchewan, Canada, could hold a century's worth of Montana's carbon dioxide, Spangler said.
