Scientists dyed a harbor pink to fight climate change
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There was something strange happening in Canada’s Halifax harbor on Thursday. The color of the water turned bright pink.
According to a report by CBC Radio's Maritime Noon, scientists with Dalhousie University used pink fluorescent dye on Nova Scotia Power's Tufts Cove Generating Station in Dartmouth to track how the water and what’s in it moves.
Adding alkaline material
The aim is that this new project will one day help combat climate change by allowing scientists to add to the harbor alkaline material that can trap CO2 emissions.
"This is only a small bit, actually, in a much bigger research endeavor," Katja Fennel, an oceanographer leading the research, told CBC Radio's Maritime Noon on Thursday.
“The ultimate goal here is to test an idea for a technology that would help us reduce atmospheric CO2 and could be one tool in the toolbox for fighting climate change, basically."
The experiment saw 500 liters of dye poured into the cooling water outfall of the habor’s generating station. Before you panic about the environmental effect it should be noted that the dye is water soluble and safe.
The researchers then unleashed a slew of boats, drones and underwater robots to track the dye’s path in order to get a grasp of how materials travel in the harbor.
Fennel told CBC Radio's Maritime Noon the data from this experiment will be put to use in September when Dartmouth-based company Planetary Technologies will finally add the CO2-storing alkaline material into the water.
"It turns out that the ocean has this great capability to permanently and safely store CO2, because it is slightly alkaline, and so that's the reason why the ocean already holds tremendous amounts of CO2 — 50 times as much CO2 as is in the atmosphere," she told the news radio.
Stored in water
The alkaline material will serve to enhance carbon dioxide absorption in the ocean, getting the dangerous greenhouse gas emission out of the atmosphere and safely stored in the water, but first scientists must test its potential effectiveness using pink dye.
"In order to credibly claim that this is a potential tool to help mitigate CO2 in the atmosphere, we need to measure it and accurately verify and quantify how much CO2 is indeed taken up," Fennel explained to CBC Radio's Maritime Noon.
"And so dye allows us to basically say, 'OK, this water has received alkalinity, it should be taking up more CO2 as opposed to a water sample that's taken 500 meters outside of the plume that has not received the alkaline treatment.'”
“Ocean alkalinity enhancement has the greatest potential, actually, in terms of storing carbon permanently and safely at a scale that is relevant for global climate," she added.
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