For many years here, I’ve been advocating the use of nanotechnology in the development of carbon sequestration technologies, occasionally updating on promising applications of nanotech in hoovering excess CO2 from the atmosphere.
Direct applications like carbon nanotube membranes filtering power plant emissions are getting a lot of attention (and capital), but some of the most interesting and useful developments on the nanoscale have been products that stimulate desirable natural effects. One example of this is using nanoscale structures as a “bridge” on which the brain can rebuild neural connections.
A new use of nanoscale stuff to enhance natural processes was announced this week at the Goldschmidt Conference, presented by Geochemical Society and the European Association of Geochemistry.
And it could be big news in carbon capture.
Magnesite is a naturally-occurring mineral with a handy talent for sucking carbon. A ton of it can absorb half a ton of atmospheric CO2.
Just one problem: natural formation of magnesite is slooooow... Carbon sequestration systems using magnesite could well be effective, but we don’t have hundreds of thousands of years to get the stuff.
The findings presented at Goldschmidt by Professor Ian Power and a team at Trent University, Ontario could speed things up a bit.
Scientists find way to make mineral which can remove CO2 from atmosphere
Project leader, Professor Ian Power (Trent University, Ontario, Canada) said:
"Our work shows two things. Firstly, we have explained how and how fast magnesite forms naturally. This is a process which takes hundreds to thousands of years in nature at Earth's surface. The second thing we have done is to demonstrate a pathway which speeds this process up dramatically"
The researchers were able to show that by using polystyrene microspheres as a catalyst, magnesite would form within 72 days. The microspheres themselves are unchanged by the production process, so they can ideally be reused.
"Using microspheres means that we were able to speed up magnesite formation by orders of magnitude. This process takes place at room temperature, meaning that magnesite production is extremely energy efficient"
Read more at:
https://phys.org/news/2018-08-scientists-mineral-co2-atmosphere.html#jCp
Power acknowledged that the process is still in the experimental stage and that scaling it up ”depends on several variables, including the price of carbon and the refinement of the sequestration technology, but we now know that the science makes it do-able".
A “small” development worth watching.
Nanoscale Formula One car