Download Carbon Sequestration and New Frontiers for Clay Science

Department of Civil & Environmental
Engineering &Earth Sciences
Environmental Engineering & Earth
Sciences Lecture Series
FRIDAY, April 4th, 2014
4:00 – 5:00 pm, 356 FITZPATRICK HALL
ADJUNCT PROF. PAUL GIESTING
Dept. Geology
Illinois State University
“Carbon Sequestration and New Frontiers for Clay
Science”
ABSTRACT:
Carbon sequestration is a potential engineering solution that could allow the continued use of
fossil fuels in power plants while reducing or eliminating their CO2 output. This solution would
require new technology to segregate and pump the CO2 into a geologic medium, as well as a
significant degree of certainty that the sequestered CO2 would not leak back out. In
sequestration scenarios that depend on storage rather than rapid reaction of the CO2 with the
sequestration medium, an impermeable cap – almost always dominated by clay minerals – is
required to hold the CO2 in place. The effectiveness of these natural caps will depend on the
physics of supercritical CO2 and its wetting behavior, as well as on the chemistry of clay – CO2
interactions…an aspect of the problem that was late to receive the attention it deserves. In this
talk, I will discuss how new techniques have allowed experimental assessment of phenomena at
conditions of T and P in carbon sequestration systems by X-ray diffraction and spectroscopy,
how new ideas in clay mineralogy have evolved in response to these experiments along with
chemical calculation work, and what the future might hold for the science and the technology of
carbon sequestration.
BIO:
Paul received his B.A. and A.M. in Earth and Planetary Science at Washington University in St.
Louis in 2001 and 2002. He then went to graduate school at Notre Dame, receiving his PhD in
2006 with a dissertation on the crystal chemistry and complexation behavior of uranium (VI).
He worked for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management from 2006 to 2009 and
obtained his professional license in 2010. From 2009 to 2011 he worked as a postdoc at the
University of Illinois – Chicago on clay-CO2 interaction, and in 2012 and 2013 he worked on the
geochemistry of amphibole and the composition of magmatic fluids on Mars. He is now a
visiting professor at Illinois State University teaching mineralogy, petrology, and planetary
science and working on the late volcanic history of the island of Kaua’i.