Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009

USC to study Lowcountry for carbon gas storage

The University of South Carolina will use a $4.95 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study the feasibility of storing carbon dioxide underground in the Lowcountry, the school announced Tuesday.

"Carbon dioxide is a major greenhouse gas," said John Shafer, director of USC’s Earth Sciences and Resources Institute and the grant’s principal investigator. "If we can find a viable way to capture carbon dioxide and store it safely underground for centuries, then we can perhaps reduce the amount of (carbon dioxide) in our atmosphere."

The three-year grant will focus on the South Georgia Rift basin, where deep saline aquifers exist in Colleton, Beaufort and Jasper counties, Shafer said.

Money from the S.C. Geological Survey, the university and the University of Illinois put the total funding for the project at about $6 million, USC said in a statement

-- Wayne Washington

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