Rese­ar­ches are curr­ent­ly working to estab­lish the reser­voir capa­ci­ty of sand­stone lay­ers in Advent­da­len for car­bon dioxi­de. The equip­ment used for pre­vious tests has not been strong enough to explo­re the full poten­ti­al. Test­ing is done by pum­ping water into the lay­ers 970 met­res under the sur­face, start­ing with a rate of 10 liters/minute and incre­asing gra­du­al­ly to 500 liters/minute. The results will help to eva­lua­te the ques­ti­on if the lay­ers in ques­ti­on are sui­ta­ble to store lar­ge amounts of car­bon dioxi­de safe­ly. If so, car­bon dioxi­de will be pres­sed down in liquid sta­te, thus water as test­ing sub­s­tance. A 400 meter thick per­ma­frost lay­er is sup­po­sed to keep the liquid gas insi­de. If test­ing works accor­ding to plan, UNIS sci­en­tists plan to con­ti­nue with fur­ther test dril­lings in 2011.

Source: Sval­bard­pos­ten