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This Lab-Made Mineral Just Became a Key Candidate For Reducing CO2 in The Atmosphere
Scientists just worked out a way of rapidly producing a mineral capable of storing carbon dioxide (CO2) - giving us a potentially exciting option for dealing with our increasingly overcooked planet. Magnesite, which is a type of magnesium carbonate, forms when magnesium combines with carbonic acid - CO2 dissolved in water. If we can produce this mineral at a massive scale, it could safely store large amounts of carbon dioxide we simply don't need in our planet's atmosphere.
[...] Being able to make the mineral in the lab could be a major step forward in terms of how effective carbon sequestration might eventually be. "Using microspheres means that we were able to speed up magnesite formation by orders of magnitude," says [Ian] Power. "This process takes place at room temperature, meaning that magnesite production is extremely energy efficient."
[...] With a tonne of naturally-occurring magnesite able to capture around half a tonne of CO2, we're going to need a lot of magnesite, and somewhere to put it all as well. As with other carbon capture processes, it's not yet clear whether this will successfully scale up as much as it needs to. That said, these new discoveries mean lab-made magnesite could one day be helpful – it puts the mineral on the table as an option for further investigation.
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(Score: 2) by fritsd on Tuesday August 21 2018, @05:02PM
Yes that's very true :-) we don't yet know the full cost of *not* decreasing CO2, but this summer vacation I was well pissed off that it was 35°C! And I'm not even a barley stalk! (essential for brewing beer, which you can't drink anymore when it's 35°C anyway. and apparently when it's >=35°C for longer time the barley yield goes down "disastrously")
But this process competes with other Carbon sequestration processes, some of which may be cheaper, is my sincere hope.
I read (a little bit) about biochar: biochar [wikipedia.org]
- plant cheap and fast-growing trees
- let the trees do all the work of the Carbon sequestration as if their lives depend on it, and wait 20 years (repeat every year, of course)
- pyrolyze (i.e. burn but with only the oxidizers of the tree itself, sealed off from air) the wood. This should give enough energy that you only need to set the wood on fire, so it costs little.
- take the gases to burn to heat something else, and drain the tar to make turpentine or something else useful. A large part of the original sequestered CO2 stays in the form of biochar.
- the charcoal can be stuck underground, it improves the soil and gets consumed only very slowly, so it can delay the worst of Climate Change over a period of 1000 years or so.
As long as forest fires are rare this should work? Has anyone done the maths? (Not me).