[Rockhounds] Scientists find way to make mineral which can remove CO2 from atmosphere

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Scientists have found a rapid way of producing magnesite, a mineral which
stores carbon dioxide. If this can be developed to an industrial scale, it
opens the door to removing CO2 from the atmosphere for long-term storage,
thus countering the global warming effect of atmospheric CO2. This work is
presented at the Goldschmidt conference in Boston.

Scientists are already working to slow global warming
<https://phys.org/tags/global+warming/> by removing carbon
<https://phys.org/tags/carbon/> dioxide from the atmosphere, but there are
serious practical and economic limits on developing the technology. Now,
for the first time, researchers have explained how magnesite forms at low
temperature, and offered a route to dramatically accelerating its
crystallization. A tonne of naturally-occurring magnesite can remove around
half a tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere, but the rate of formation is very
slow.

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.


Read more at:
https://phys.org/news/2018-08-scientists-mineral-co2-atmosphere.html#jCp