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In order to mitigate climate change, it will be necessary to remove large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere and store it over geological time scales, in parallel with the transformation of society to a largely CO2-free economy. The PERBAS project is investigating the suitability of flood basalts for the long-term safe storage of CO2.
Test sites such as Carbfix (Iceland) and Wallula (USA) have confirmed that CO2 injected into volcanic rock reacts chemically and mineralises almost immediately. As a result, the carbon is permanently stored as a solid (carbonate) in the pore spaces of the reservoir rock. The CO2 storage project in Iceland shows how quickly this process can take place in basalts: because the storage rock there is young, warm and particularly reactive, and because the CO2 was injected as an aqueous solution, 98 per cent of the injected CO2 was mineralised within two years.
Worldwide, flood basalts on continental margins offer an estimated volume of 40,000,000 megatonnes for carbon storage. Expedition SO310 'CO2PR' will acquire high-resolution geophysical data (seismic, electromagnetics) for these analyses, in order to establish parameters for the characterisation and monitoring of a potential storage site.