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Electrochemical Acceleraion of Chemical Weathering to Counter Ocean Acidification?
" Kurt House's idea to bolster the oceans' ability to sequester carbon dioxide sounds straightforward enough. Because higher atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas have blunted the oceans' ability to act as a carbon sink by making them more acidic, House - a graduate student in Harvard's Earth and Sciences department - contends, pumping in more basic solutions should help reverse that trend.
Arguing that it would take much too long - several thousand years - for the oceans to return to their equilibrium state naturally , (Kurt) House's proposal, known as electrochemical weathering, would accelerate a normal process that dissolves rocks on land to form alkaline solutions. The reactions that form the solutions, which eventually find their way to the sea, would be sped up by using a much stronger acid to dissolve the rocks..."
Read the full article: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/11/countering_ocean_acidification.php
See also: "Electrochemical Acceleration of Chemical Weathering as an Energetically Feasible Approach to Mitigating Anthropogenic Climate Change" by Kurt Zenz House, Christopher H. House, Daniel P. Schrag and Michael J. Aziz. Environmental Science and Technology, November 2007.
