Six commercially viable ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and/or reduce CO2 emissions

Abstract

Background: The burning of fossil fuels is the main cause of rising CO 2 levels of the atmosphere. This will probably result in climate change. Another consequence is ocean acidification. Although these consequences are not yet proven beyond doubt, the risk of doing nothing is too large. The simplest response is the removal and sustainable storage of CO 2 . By reaction with basic minerals, nature has sequestered almost all of the CO 2 that has ever been released by the planet. This weathering continues to play a role but nature cannot cope with the ongoing much (30 to 60 times) higher rates of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

Fate of transition metals during passive carbonation of ultramafic mine tailings via air capture with potential for metal resource recovery

“…In Iceland, in situ CO2 injection has been trialled in mafic to ultramafic formations (Matter et al, 2011;Matter et al, 2016;Okamoto et al, 2006). Proposed in situ treatments include sulfuric acid leaching of mine tailings to induce mineral carbonation (Power et al, 2010;McCutcheon et al, 2015McCutcheon et al, , 2017, or geoengineering scenarios including the application of ultramafic minerals in major river catchments and along coastlines (Hartmann et al, 2013;Schuiling and de Boer, 2013). Here, we find that Mg-carbonate minerals (hydromagnesite and possibly pyroaurite) are likely to be effective sinks for potentially toxic trace metals released by accelerated mineral carbonation in these scenarios.…”

Climate Change and CO<sub>2</sub> Removal from the Atmosphere

“…It is, because grains tumble around in the surf, they collide, they abrade each other (Figure 2), resulting in myriads of micron sized olivine slivers that weather very fast [10]. So, to answer their objections:…”

Modeling the Dynamic Landscape Evolution of a Volcanic Coastal Environment Under Future Climate Trajectories

“…Recently, the idea of introducing negative emissions technologies (NETs) to actively uptake carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, have been advocated. One approach that has been proposed is enhanced silicate weathering, which is a strategy in which humans could enhance the natural process of mineral weathering (specifically olivine) to such a degree that enough CO 2 could be taken out of the atmosphere to at least partially alleviate the impacts of anthropogenic climate change (Schuiling and de Boer, 2013;Meysman and Montserrat, 2017;Schuiling, 2017). Although this strategy has the potential to sequester some of the carbon humans have released into the atmosphere, the speed of olivine weathering in nature as well as the efficacy, impact and cost of mining and supplying olivine to environments where weathering would be most effective are still debated.…”