By NNN-PTI
Visakhapatnam (India) : The vast tracts of India’s Deccan volcanic plateau may hold the answer to reduce carbon emissions responsible for global warming that has posed a threat to the earth.
Indian geologists have discovered that the sprawling basalt rocks in the Deccan plateau had turned carbon dioxide trapped in them during their formation into carbonates or varieties of salts over the years.
Scientists believe that carbon dioxide emitted by factories could be injected in these formations that are spread over five lakh (500,000) sq km area encompassing most of central and southern India, V P Dimri, Director of the Hyderabad-based National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) said at a session of the ongoing Indian Science Congress here.
NGRI scientists had studied basalt rock formations at four places — Kutch region of Gujarat, Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh, Belgaum in Karnataka and Igatpuri in Maharashtra.
“The results are encouraging. We found that carbon dioxide had turned into harmless carbonates of magnesium and calcium,” Dimri said.
Since the area is vast the geologists plan to carry out a detailed survey at 20 locations across the Deccan plateau.
They plan to inject carbon dioxide into the earth, a process known as carbon sequestration.
A similar study done by the Idaho National Laboratory in the United States, where volcanic basalt covers 85,000 sq miles, found that the region could store 100 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.