Mpumalanga Business 2022-23

INTERVIEW
The hyperspectral core scanner in use at the Council for Geoscience National Core Library.
making this financially viable so it is important to
mention that these areas are below the current
coal fields. You would not need to transport the
CO2 very far to be stored.
The type of storage is quite critical. At a depth
of about 1km you find saline aquifers. That holds
the type of water that you can’t necessarily use for
anything. If you pump the CO2 into that salty water,
the CO2 slowly reacts with the salt in the water but
it can take up to thousands of years before the CO2
becomes immobile. However, if you store the CO2 in
the type of rocks that we are looking at, that reaction
can theoretically happen much quicker. The sooner
you convert the gaseous CO2 into a solid CO2, the
sooner it is rendered immobile. Then it cannot move
around and get back into the atmosphere.
What effect would these processes have on the
environment?
A lot of our work so far has been specifically on
environmental monitoring. This is a critical point.
Before we actually develop this technology, we
are doing a significant amount of environmental
research to make sure that we can understand the
baseline environmental conditions on the ground.
We want to get a footprint of the area – the flora, the
fauna, the chemistry of the groundwater, the amount of
groundwater there is – all of that information.
Are CGS staff excited about the CCUS project?
Yes. It is a very big project. The principle is that it’s
a challenge. There are a lot of different opinions
around the transition. Some say we are not moving
fast enough. Others say we are moving too fast.
This is the nice thing about being pragmatic – a
fundamental scientist if you like – being practical and
finding solutions that will be sustainable.
Our technology for renewables is still developing;
we are not there entirely yet. It’s a big challenge and
we need to buy ourselves some time. For the first
time in a long time, the issue is being looked at
directly by scientists, not necessarily only by policymakers.
We have to guide them, we need to show
what is possible, scientifically and empirically. How
do you present empirical data that has passed peer
review? That is the principle that we are focusing on.
The carbon capture project is a large, integrated
project. The project is funded both by the South
African Government and the World Bank and the
entire project budget is about $23-million.
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