Pollyea and a team of undergraduate and graduate geology students are breaking ground every day, trying to unearth new ways to take large amounts of carbon dioxide generated mostly by industries, pumping it at least two miles beneath the earth’s surface, and storing it to reduce its harmful effects on the atmosphere.
“As a science question, it was always fascinating to me,” Pollyea said. “I know a lot of our science that we do, we learn stuff, but maybe it never gets commercialized. There’s a reason we do basic science, because you don’t know when those tools and that knowledge will be useful in the future.
“So I just kept doing it, enjoying it, and became, I think, relatively good at the modeling part of it. Then, over the last handful of years, we see that there is a commercial appetite for it.”
Those unfamiliar with carbon should know that carbon dioxide can be used in a variety of products — soda, beer, refrigerants, plastics, adhesives, fire extinguishers. But the world produces too much of it, which leads to a heating effect on the environment.
Watching the growth of industries globally — leading to an emission of more carbon dioxide annually — has scientists like Pollyea concerned about the ramifications on a worldwide population of more than 8 billion people. Those ramifications also have many industries seeking more eco-friendly processes.
“There’s the cost of doing something, but there’s also the cost of not doing something,” Pollyea said. “And how do we figure out which one is more?”