Alarm to monitor captured greenhouse gas

The £2m Amadeus project is based around novel technology being developed by a team led by Strathclyde University’s Dr Nicholas Lockerbie.

The remote monitoring device at the heart of the project, known as a gravity gradiometer, will be lowered via pre-drilled boreholes into underground reservoirs of liquid carbon dioxide (CO2?).

The aim is to show how successfully these subterranean storage areas are being filled up.

The instrument could also check the local gravity gradient at different depths, in order to make sure the CO2 is not seeping out of its storage location.

“A promising approach to carbon capture and storage (CCS) is to take, say, a depleted oil well, and to pump CO2 down into it, out of harm’s way,” said Lockerbie.

“When you do that, the pressure the CO2 is under causes it to liquefy, meaning it can be stored safely in what are effectively huge underground reservoirs.

“Moreover, the captured CO2 will create its own gravity gradient signal, which can neither be screened nor modified.”