Wastewater alkalinity addition as a novel approach for ocean negative carbon emissions
Date
2022-06-23
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The Innovation
Abstract
Anthropogenic CO2 emissions have greatly increased atmospheric CO2 contributing to global warming and leading to ocean acidification (Figure 1). As reflected in the recent IPCC report, the scientific community's consensus is that emissions reductions alone are not sufficient or timely enough to avoid a global warming catastrophe. Thus, negative-carbon-emission technologies are needed to avoid atmospheric CO2 overshoot scenarios and limit global warming to less than 2°C by the end of this century per the Paris Agreement. Due to the urgency and scale of the issue, multiple negative-emission technologies should be evaluated and adopted with broad community involvement to address our society's pressing climate crisis. The goal is to remove at least 10 Gt-CO2/year from the atmosphere by the mid to-late century,2 which is more than the current annual anthropogenic CO2 uptake by the global ocean (Figure 1). Among various ocean negative-carbon-emission approaches or ocean-based carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies, ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) is an approach that will decrease sea surface pCO2 via the addition of alkaline materials and promote CO2 uptake from the atmosphere. Additionally, as the oceanic dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) reservoir is nearly 50 times the atmospheric CO2 content, the sequestered CO2 can remain in the ocean DIC pool as bicarbonate (HCO3−) for centuries. OAE is viewed with high confidence under the efficacy criterion and medium on environmental risk in the recent report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.1
Description
This article was originally published in The Innovation. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xinn.2022.100272
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Citation
Cai, Wei-Jun, and Nianzhi Jiao. “Wastewater Alkalinity Addition as a Novel Approach for Ocean Negative Carbon Emissions.” The Innovation 3, no. 4 (July 2022): 100272. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xinn.2022.100272.