Challenges of CO2 removal from the atmosphere by capturing, storage, and utilization for avoiding extreme climate change

[Geoengineering News]

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43994-025-00297-4

Authors: Amin A. El-Meligi & Bassem S. Nabawy 

18 December 2025

Abstract

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is a crucial process to controlling climate change. Accordingly, this review presents the methods and implication of CDR on climate changes. CDR encompasses procedures used on land or in aquatic environments. Land-based approaches include afforestation, reforestation, carbon farming (agricultural activities that absorb carbon in soils), direct air storage and capture, and bioenergy with CO2 storage and capture. Quantum calculation (QC) indicates that the band gap energy (BGE) of carbon dioxide (CO2) is about 9 eV. This large value of BGE indicates the chemical and thermodynamic stability of CO2, but it significantly affects global warming. Increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere leads to increasing of heat trapping, especially IR radiation, where CO2 vibrational bending modes at nearly 667 cm−1 and asymmetric stretching mode at about 2349 cm−1 cause trapping of heat. On the other side, recently CO2 became commonly utilized to maintain the pressure of the natural underground hydrocarbon-bearing reservoirs and to flush out the hydrocarbons to the surface. Furthermore, it can be injected, captured, and stored in these porous subsurface geologic units. This can be achieved through a consequent procedure, including capturing, compressing, transportation, and injection into the subsurface units. The subsurface storage process is achieved through many procedures, such as mineral carbonization, injection in coal bed methane, gas hydrates, basaltic rocks, and organic-rich shale rocks. To ensure efficiency of the CO2 injection, trapping should be applied by natural mechanisms, including residual/capillary trapping, stratigraphic and structural trapping, dissolution trapping, and mineralogical trapping.

Source: Springer Nature Link