Reduction of CO ₂ Emissions Through Waste Materials Recycling by Mineral Carbonation

Abstract

Carbon capture and storage ( CCS ) by mineral carbonation is one of the proposed technologies for the reduction of CO 2 emission from power and industrial plants. Mineral carbonation occurs when metal oxides in inorganic wastes and silicate rocks react with CO 2 forming stable carbonates. Waste materials are of particular interest as mineral carbonation resource, as they are cheap, often colocated to CO 2 emitters and rich in metal oxides. Unfortunately, the reaction in nature requires geological times due to kinetics limitations and different direct and indirect mineral carbonation approaches have been proposed to overcome these limitations. The technical limits of the mineral carbonation technology, the reuse of inorganic wastes as mineral carbonation resource, and the potential application of the reaction products toward the reduction of the technology costs have been discussed. In addition, the postprocessing required to obtain the final sellable materials have been summarized.