Carbon sequestration buzz: Bees and balloons looking for leaks
July 21st, 2009 by Jeff Kart
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You’ve heard of the canary in the coal mine as an indicator of a toxic environment.
The U.S. Department of Energy is using bees and helium balloons to make sure carbon dioxide is staying put in sequestration sites.
How? Researchers at the National Energy Technology Lab are using chemical tracers to fingerprint CO2, then comparing it to pollen collected by the bees.
“Researchers will determine if pollen collected by bees contains measurable quantities of tracer or if bees bring back tracer from direct contact with foliage. They will use balloons to determine atmospheric variations in tracer content to assess the effectiveness of CO2 storage sites,” the DOE reports.
The agency is working with researchers from Michigan State University, which by the way, makes its own honey.
Michigan is home to a carbon sequestration test site in Gaylord, part of a larger project called the Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership.
(Image Credit: Doug Stremel, via Flickr).
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About the Author
Jeff Kart is typing about issues in the Great Lakes, from advanced biofuels to zero-emission vehicles. Jeff is an environmental journalist and social media evangelist based in Michigan, where the summers are short, the winters are cold, and the stories are plentiful.
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