It can take thousands of years from start to finish for all of the carbon to mineralize, and at any point, a shift in the rocks can cause some carbon to escape.Ĭlimate researchers have long recognized that highly reactive basaltic rocks could be a solution to the carbon storage problem. However, this method alone can’t store a large enough volume of carbon or mineralize it fast enough to meet the carbon storage demand. Get the most fascinating science news stories of the week in your inbox every Friday.Ĭarbon dioxide dissolved in water reacted with the basalt (black) in this core to create carbonates (white), trapping the carbon in solid form deep beneath the ground.
That carbon eventually seeps into small rock pores, dissolves in groundwater, and reacts with the rock to become carbonate minerals, trapping the carbon for good. Most ongoing carbon capture and storage ( CCS) projects seal captured CO 2 deep underground in sedimentary rock reservoirs to keep it from escaping. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that to keep climate change below 1.5☌, humanity must not only drastically cut CO 2 emissions but actively remove CO 2 from the atmosphere and keep it locked away. The permanent storage is the key here,” she said.
We don’t have to monitor it for the next decades or so. “By mineralizing, we are permanently getting rid of the CO 2. She is the head of CO 2 mineral storage at CarbFix. “We are basing our methods on this natural process which is part of the big carbon cycle where all carbon on Earth derives from and ends up in rocks,” said one of the lead researchers, Sandra Snæbjörnsdóttir.
Standard carbon storage methods can take thousands of years to do the same. In carbon storage experiments tied to geothermal power plants in Iceland, 90% of injected carbon dioxide (CO 2) transformed into minerals in just 2 years.
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