Researchers Find Rapid Way to Make Carbon Dioxide-Storing Mineral Magnesite

A team of researchers led by Trent University’s Professor Ian Power has developed an accelerated way to produce magnesite (MgCO₃) at room temperature — a mineral which can capture the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere.

Magnesite. Image credit: Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Scientists are already working to slow global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but there are serious practical and economic limits on developing the technology.

Now, for the first time, they have explained how magnesite forms at low temperature, and offered a route to dramatically accelerating its crystallization.

“Our work shows two things. Firstly, we have explained how and how fast magnesite forms naturally,” Professor Power said.

“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.”

Professor Power and colleagues 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,” Professor Power said.

“This process takes place at room temperature, meaning that magnesite production is extremely energy efficient.”

“For now, we recognise that this is an experimental process, and will need to be scaled up before we can be sure that magnesite can be used in carbon sequestration (taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and permanently storing it as magnesite).”

“This 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.”

The researchers presented their results this week at the Goldschmidt 2018 conference in Boston, Massachusetts.

_____

I. Power et al. Magnesite Formation at Earth’s Surface. Goldschmidt 2018 Abstracts, 13b: 302