Objective
One prominent idea for mitigating global climate change is to remove CO2 from the atmosphere by storing it in fluids in the natural environment; for example dissolved within sediments below the ocean floor or in oceanic crust. This carbon sequestration is popular because it would allow us to place carbon into semi-permanent (on human timescales) storage, ‘buying time’ to wean us from our dependence on carbon-based energy sources. Application of such a mitigation technique presumes knowledge of what will happen to carbon when it is dissolved in various environments. Studies of naturally produced excess dissolved CO2 are, however, equivocal; this lack of knowledge represents a huge deficit in our comprehension of the global carbon cycle and specifically the processes removing carbon from the surface of the planet over geological timescales.
This proposal will resolve the sink for CO2 within marine sediments and oceanic crust. Beneath much of the ocean floor exists the ‘deep biosphere’, microbial populations living largely in the absence of oxygen, consuming organic carbon that has fallen to the sea floor, producing a large excess of dissolved inorganic carbon. This dissolved inorganic carbon can diffuse back to the ocean or can precipitate in situ as carbonate minerals. Previous attempts to quantify the flux of carbon through the deep biosphere focused mostly on studies of sulfur and carbon, and these studies cannot reveal the fate of the produced inorganic carbon. I propose a novel approach to constrain the fate of carbon through the study of the subsurface calcium cycle. Calcium is the element involved in precipitating carbon as in situ carbonate minerals and thus will directly provide the required mass balance to determine the fate of CO2 in the marine subsurface. This mass balance will be achieved through experiments, measurements, and numerical modeling, to achieve the primary objective of constraining the fate of carbon in submarine environments.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences chemical sciences inorganic chemistry inorganic compounds
- natural sciences chemical sciences inorganic chemistry alkaline earth metals
- natural sciences physical sciences astronomy planetary sciences planets
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences atmospheric sciences meteorology biosphera
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences atmospheric sciences climatology climatic changes
You need to log in or register to use this function
We are sorry... an unexpected error occurred during execution.
You need to be authenticated. Your session might have expired.
Thank you for your feedback. You will soon receive an email to confirm the submission. If you have selected to be notified about the reporting status, you will also be contacted when the reporting status will change.
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
ERC-2012-StG_20111012
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Host institution
CB2 1TN CAMBRIDGE
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.