Man-made global warming has slowly abandoned its merely theoretical realm to live in the realm of harsh realities. Although it has been guided by the In 2015, carbon dioxide emissions fell for the first time in economic growth. So what’s the fuss? By changing our electricity generation model, we can bring emissions down to sustainable levels, but this will take many years. Some have suggested that thousands of rockets could be launched into the atmosphere to simulate a volcanic eruption, preventing the sun’s rays from reaching Earth. Putting the network in orbit to deflect the sun’s rays. However, carbon dioxide disposal may prove to be a more realistic approach.
A recent paper published in Science looks at a fundamentally new technology. The long name is “carbon dioxide sequestration by direct mineral carbonation”.Basically this involves converting CO2 to limestone.
CO2 Rock, a mineral that could reverse global warming
A team of researchers from the United States, Iceland and France found that by pumping gas deep into underground basalt, a chemical process that turns it into calciteThis technique involves CO dilution.2 Water and hydrogen sulfide react with the volcanic minerals below to form harmless calcium carbonate.
Until now, the mineralization process proposed by a team of geoengineers was thought to take hundreds or even thousands of years. However, the paper’s lead author, Jürg Matter, announced that he could complete the process in less than two years, with efficiencies between 95% and 98%.
The first tests began in 2009, injecting gas into a basalt formation 130 to 260 feet below the surface. The testbed chosen for the Carbfix project was the Helsheidi geothermal power station in Iceland, the largest of its kind in the world.Geothermal energy is very clean, but pumping water underground releases CO2 Sulfide gas as a by-product that needs to be treated. Shortly after starting the experiment, scientists discovered that the carbon dioxide had turned into a white chalk-like mineral.
In 2012, Hellisheidi’s team began pumping carbon dioxide underground at an industrial scale of 5,000 tons per year. This is just a fraction of his 40,000 tonnes that the power plant emits each year. However, engineers have found the process to be stable despite the increase, so that amount will double this year. This opens the door to large-scale applications around the world.
“Can you complete the process in two years and achieve 95-98% efficiency?”
The technology Matter and his team have developed differs from other underground carbon sequestration systems that utilize underground cavities left by depleted gas and oil fields. These other options pose long-term problems as injected gases can be released during an earthquake or leak through cracks. mineral carbonationon the other hand, Converts carbon dioxide into a risk-free solid substanceAlso, the cost per ton of neutralized CO is2 estimated to be less than half that of other isolation and storage techniques.
here You have a video that summarizes everything about mineral carbonation in a very graphical way
Source: Phys.org, Europa Press, Reykjavík Energy
