Put the lime in the oceans and drink the carbon up

A project described as “an open source solution to climate change” aims to use lime to boost the oceans’ ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Cquestrate’s idea: heat limestone to a very high temperature, breaking it down into lime and carbon dioxide. Then dump the lime into the sea, where it will react with carbon dioxide dissolved in the water.

Yes, the initial process of making lime produces carbon dioxide. But the project’s advocates say that adding lime to ocean water ends up absorbing almost twice as much atmospheric carbon dioxide as the lime-making process itself generates.

According to Cquestrate, “lime-seeding” the seas would also reduce ocean acidification, an accelerating trend that threatens carbonate-based sea creatures and lessens the oceans’ ability to absorb carbon.

“If done on a large enough scale it would be possible to reduce carbon dioxide levels back to what they were before the Industrial Revolution,” Cquestrate’s Website asserts.

Cquestrate was founded by Tim Kruger, a management consultant at London firm Corven. Kruger has been working to develop the project over the past year with the help of George Manos, a senior lecturer in chemical engineering at University College London.

Kruger says the best solution to climate change lies in inviting others to participate in helping to turn the project from concept to reality. He says the open source approach creating a broad “anti-patent” space to prevent anyone from gaining patents that could restrict the development of the process.

Kruger described his proposal today at a climate change conference in Manchester.