One Company’s Way of Fighting Global Warming: Transforming CO2 Into Useful Products
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is currently the most common solution proposed for reducing CO2 emissions. But surely there must be an alternative to just burying the greenhouse gas.
California-based Carbon Sciences thinks the answer to our CO2 problem is calcium carbonate—specifically, the company has invented a process to convert CO2 into calcium carbonate that can be used in everything from cosmetics to ceramics.
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The transformation process works by using waste mineral products from mining operations— also known as tailings—as a feedstock to transform CO2 into mineral carbonates. The particles are processed into fine mineral particulates to maximize available surface area for reacting with CO2.
The process can use CO2 that has already been buried by CCS as a “seed” for transformation. And getting the CO2 out of the ground may actually be the safest thing we can do. While CCS is a useful way to take greenhouse gases out of the air, it has notable flaws. According to Carbon Sciences CEO Derek McLeish, an earthquake could release buried CO2 in a matter of seconds.
“There’s an infinite timeline when you bury CO2,” said McLeish. “Transforming CO2 into a high value product is much more like recycling.” Additionally, the commercial value of the product offsets the cost of traditional CCS.
Carbon Sciences plans to have a mini pilot plant ready in 24 to 36 months. And the company wants to move quickly from there. “We’ll be developing relationships and business opportunities the second we get through the mini pilot plant phase,” said McLeish.
If Carbon Sciences is successful, maybe we’ll be casually toting around CO2-derived products in our bags instead of hoping that a major quake doesn’t blow the stuff out of the ground.
The Co2 is also good for algae/plant growth, which can in turn produce oxygen and food, fuel, and other resources.
Carbon fixing is a good idea… but we still need to decrease carbon emissions.
The biotech company LS9 Inc. is using single-celled bacteria to create an oil equivalent from CO2 (”Lab makes renewable diesel fuel from E. coli poop,” CNN, 13 August 2008).
Also, a Canadian company says that it has developed a way for makers of precast concrete products to take all the carbon-dioxide emissions from their factories, as well as neighboring industrial facilities, and store them in the products that they produce by exposing those products to carbon-dioxide-rich flue gases during the curing process (”A Concrete Fix to Global Warming,” ABC News, 24 July 2008).
I see a potential win-win here…calcium carbonate is used to make paper alkaline (as opposed to acidic) which makes paper last 500 years.
But I also agree w/billso that we need to reduce emissions overall.
If you want good link(s) to background stories on LS9, here’s the write-ups I did on it.
http://www.dailytech.com/Startup+Uses+Bacteria+to+Make+Synthetic+Gas+Could+Knock+Off+Ethanol/article12108.htm
http://www.dailytech.com/Startup+Has+E+Coli+Pooping+Black+Gold/article12649.htm
As far as I know, the bacteria use primarily organic waste, not CO2, so this tech is different. I believe it does use CO2 to boost production, but this is more of a secondary thing.
Personally I always found sequestration to be a bit of a questionable proposition, but this seems like a great idea. The best part is the economics make it hard to argue against on the grounds that you don’t believe in anthropogenic warming.
Good find!!
-Jason @ DailyTech
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