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by Richard Maltzman,
Dave Shirley
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Date
A recent article in the New York times discusses the possibility of sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere in existing rock in the Oman Mountains (see Google Earth image).
As a rockhound myself (I mined my own collection of Herkimer Diamonds - actually just doubly-terminated quartz crystals, example above), I find any story that involves minerals and rocks to be anything but boring (excuse the pun).
When the story intersects with project management and sustainability – now you really have may attention. Let’s see if it gains any of yours.
Let’s start with a short video that explains the process of Mineral Carbonation:
What is Mineral Carbonation or Carbon Mineralization?
Now let's go to the New York Times story that got my attention.Here's a brief extract:
Scientists say that if this natural process, called carbon mineralization, could be harnessed, accelerated and applied inexpensively on a huge scale — admittedly some very big “ifs” — it could help fight climate change. Rocks could remove some of the billions of tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide that humans have pumped into the air since the beginning of the Industrial Age.
And by turning that CO2 into stone, the rocks in Oman — or in a number of other places around the world that have similar geological formations — would ensure that the gas stayed out of the atmosphere forever.
Direct-air capture, as it is known, is sometimes described as a form of geoengineering — deliberate manipulation of the climate — although that term is more often reserved for the idea of reducing warming by reflecting more sunlight away from the earth.
The “rocks” being discussed in the article look a little like the photo below, and are part of the Hawasina Nappes in Oman, which are excellently preserved examples of deep-water Mesozoic basins developed on the southern Tethyan margin. Jurassic to Cretaceous successions consisting of radiolarian cherts, shales and carbonate gravity-flow deposits are beautifully exposed.1
Some organizations have focused on this technology of carbon sequestration, knowing that simply reducing CO2 emissions alone will not get us to the numbers needed to prevent climate change from accelerating. One of these organizations is The Center for Carbon Removal.
Their mission statement:
Our mission is to accelerate the development of scalable, sustainable, economically-viable carbon removal solutions. Our goal is to halt—and then reverse—climate change by restoring atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to sustainable levels.
In the figure below, from their website, you can see the “technological solutions” are the ones which involve storing CO2 in rocks (or in engineered materials such as cement and other construction elements).
You also note that it has “greater R&D needs”, and this is where the research projects (yes, projects – many of them) are chartered to gain knowledge about the geology, the chemistry, and the processes which could accelerate carbon mineralization.
The New York Times also ran a story about this idea about 4 years ago, involving a material called olivine, and an effort to absorb CO2. From this story:
UTRECHT, the Netherlands — The solution to global warming, Olaf Schuiling says, lies beneath our feet.
For Dr. Schuiling, a retired geochemist, climate salvation would come in the form of olivine, a green-tinted mineral found in abundance around the world. When exposed to the elements, it slowly takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Olivine has been doing this naturally for billions of years, but Dr. Schuiling wants to speed up the process by spreading it on fields and beaches and using it for dikes, pathways, even sandboxes. Sprinkle enough of the crushed rock around, he says, and it will eventually remove enough CO2 to slow the rise in global temperatures.
“Let the earth help us to save the earth,” said Dr. Schuiling, who has been pursuing the idea single-mindedly for several decades and at 82 is still writing papers on the subject from his cluttered office at the University of Utrecht.
But these are not only the wild-eyed ideas of individual retired geochemists. Legendary mining company DeBeers recently announced that they were in this game as well, per this press release from about a year ago:
De Beers Group today announced it is leading a ground-breaking research project that aims to deliver carbon-neutral mining at some of the company’s operations in as few as five years.
The company’s scientists are working in close collaboration with a team of internationally-renowned scientists to investigate the potential to store large volumes of carbon at its diamond mines through the mineralisation of kimberlite ‘tailings’, the material that remains after diamonds have been removed from the ore.
I find this fascinating from a Project Management perspective, from the chartering of these projects, to the considerations of secondary risk (for example, what about the CO2 generated from the processes which are intended to capture CO2?).
If you have any interest in chemistry or geology, I suggest you learn more about the project in Oman by visiting this page from Southampton University, or even by getting updated from their actual project page.
1https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-00392892/
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: May 06, 2018 11:28 PM |
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Comments (7)
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Excellent article and well written, thanks
Very interesting, thanks for sharing
Rami Kaibni
Community Champion
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten Associates
New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Very interesting read. Thanks for sharing!!
Indeed a nice article.
Actually the project of sequestering CO2 with rocks is actually performed:
The company Greensand (www.greensand.nl) is selling olivine for this application in the Netherlands.
My own company Green Minerals (www.green-minerals.nl) is scaling up a high pressure/high temperature process to increase the reaction rate. One project is with the University of Aachen and HeidelbergCement
https://www.heidelbergcement.com/en/pr-29-06-2017
Best regards,
Pol Knops
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