The plant essentially becomes a carbon sink until it dies, at which point the carbon is released back into the atmosphere during decomposition.
“Basically, this project doesn’t allow for the decomposition phase,” Snyder said.
For example, when sugar cane is harvested, the unused portion is referred to as bagasse, huge piles of which are often seen in parts of rural Louisiana. Normally, the bagasse releases carbon back into the atmosphere. But Snyder says the leftover cane could be ground into a slurry and injected deep into the ground using biomass slurry fracture injection.
The oil and gas industry first invented the injection method to dispose of contaminated rock, and other companies have used the method of injecting wastewater. Snyder said it could give the farming community an opportunity to get rid of some of their waste.
“This could potentially work with any agricultural waste you could name. Wood chips, sawdust from forestry or papermaking, waste from animal processing, any high-carbon raw material,” he said. “You could even grow plants specifically for it, like grasses or algae.”
Biomass sludge vs. industrial carbon capture
Biomass slurry injection differs from other carbon capture projects in key ways: projects extract carbon from an emission source such as a smokestack, while this process removes carbon from the atmosphere. It can also work on a smaller scale.
“You need a lot of wells, but not every well injects millions of tons of carbon dioxide a year,” Snyder said. “Most of the processes aren’t on that scale, especially in the agricultural sector, so this suits agriculture better.”
Snyder said typical industrial carbon capture projects inject about one or two million tons of CO2 per year, while biomass slurry injection is about 30,000 tons per year.
The process could have a huge impact around the world.
“We need to remove CO2 from the atmosphere to even come close to the goals of the Paris climate agreement. This process can’t do all of that, but it could help,” Snyder said.
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