Carbon Capture and Storage

World-first experiment tests carbon capture and storage in Scotland

Adele Rackley

The critical stage of a world-first experiment, to monitor what might happen if CO2 leaks from an underground storage reservoir, was successfully completed under the seabed near Oban in Scotland this week.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is emerging as one of the front-runners in the search for climate-change mitigation strategies. The process involves capturing CO2 from power plants and industrial activity before it is emitted into the atmosphere and pumping it into deep sub-seabed reservoirs or geological structures for permanent storage.

The QICS experiment.

While leaks from storage sites are thought to be unlikely, all the potential risks of new technologies like CCS need to be investigated early in their development.

The project, led by Plymouth Marine Laboratory in collaboration with the Scottish Association for Marine Science and four other institutions, involved the injection of CO2 from a shore-based lab into shallow marine sediments so scientists could work out whether (and how) a leak from a CCS storage site below the seabed might affect marine life. The experiment also gave scientists a chance to assess various ways of monitoring for CO2 leakage.

The project is Quantifying and Monitoring Potential Ecosystem Impacts of Geological Carbon Storage (QICS). You can see the experiment in action on YouTube and learn more about QICS on the project web pages.

Source: Planet Earth Blog, June 29, 2012

Scotland: A Case of Religious Discrimination?

An independent college in Scotland, sponsored by the Dubai royal family and whose stated aim is to promote multiculturalism, has sacked its Principal - Professor Malory Nye, 47.

Nye and his wife, Isabel Campbell-Nye, 42 - the Head of the Al-Maktoum College of Higher Education's English Language Centre - alleged they were sacked for being white and Christians, according to a report by the Daily Mail. They have alleged discriminatory practices on grounds of racial and religious bias as the reason for their dismissal.

In the report by the Daily Mail, Nye claimed the patron of the college - Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum , the Deputy Ruler of Dubai - did not favor efforts by both Nye and his wife, to give the institution a more cosmopolitan feel. Additionally, Nye also claimed that both Abubaker, the Director of Operations, and Mirza al-Sayegh, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Private Secretary to the Sheikh, were against his wife and himself continuing their work at the college.

"It is clear to me that there is collusion between these two individuals that I should be removed from my position on the basis that I am not an Arab and not a Muslim and that the person who has the role of principal should be Arab and/or Muslim," Nye was quoted as saying by the Telegraph.

Malory and Isabel Nye at wedding ceremony held at the college