CO2 Emissions from the Krafla Geothermal Area, Iceland

Abstract

Geothermal resource utilization although widely accepted as a clean energy source, has also contributed to the decreasing of air quality due to hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide emissions. Several studies have shown that CO2 emissions from geothermal/volcanic systems occur naturally and in some cases these natural emissions exceed the amount of CO2 emitted from the geothermal power plant utilizing the geothermal resource. This study is carried out to quantify the natural CO2 soil flux emissions from the Krafla geothermal field, see the relation between soil gas emission and the structural geology and compare the results to the CO2 emissions from the Krafla power plant. The results of this study show that the total CO2 flux from soil degassing is approximately 14.13 t d-1 for a survey area of 2.5 km2, a positive correlation between CO2 soil flux emissions and the structural geology of the area, and the CO2 emission from natural sources exceeds the emission from the power plant by approximately 3 times.