» » Pumping carbon dioxide into volcanic rock turns it to stone

Pumping carbon dioxide into volcanic rock turns it to stone


carbon
The science of global climate change is settled. We know that increased carbon dioxide emissions increase the average temperature over time, but we don’t know what to do about it. There are a number of initiatives underway to capture and  store or “sequester” carbon dioxide, but a new project in Iceland isn’t just storing it, CarbFix can turn carbon dioxide into rock in just a few years.
Most attempts to store carbon in the ground use sedimentary rocks, which makes sense when you consider we know a lot about them. This is where you find oil, so drilling companies are well acquainted with such formations. However, carbon dioxide that you pump into sedimentary rocks won’t ever mineralize, it just sits there in gas pockets forever. That means it could be released one day, then all your hard work pumping it down there will be for naught. Volcanic basalt formations, on the other hand, can lock up carbon.
iceland carbon
The CarbFix project pumped 210 tons of CO2 into a basalt field and monitored to see what happened to it. The way scientists kept track of the carbon they injected was quite clever, too. The carbon dioxide was dissolved in water prior to being injected, making what was essentially a giant pool of sparkling water. A small amount of radioactive carbon-14 was added to the mixture as well. The volcanic basalt field was too old to have its own carbon-14, so the researchers knew that carbon-14 they found later would have to have come from the injected carbon.
Remarkably, the carbon dioxide pumped into the Earth was processed into carbonate rock in just two years. That’s a few centuries at least ahead of schedule. This is thanks to a chemical reaction in the rocks that won’t happen in sedimentary deposits. The main drawback right now is the cost. The CarbFix system is more expensive, and it requires a substantial volume of water. Iceland is running a larger test right now. If that’s successful, the higher upfront cost might not be a deal breaker.
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