Carbfix
What if you could capture CO2 from the air and “locked” it up permanently into a rock? Wouldn’t this help us to fight against global warming? It certainly would. Luckily, Carbfix is doing just that. They are turning C02 into stone. How in the world do you turn gas into stone? Let’s find out.
As you might know, trees capture CO2 and store it inside them. Also, they are an excellent tool to fight against deforestation. So, why do we need any other solutions to fight against global warming? Why don’t we just plant trees and the job is done? Well, yes and no. Based on an article from National Geographic: “there is enough suitable land to increase the world’s forest cover by one-third without affecting existing cities or agriculture.” This is really good. Also, stopping deforestation and starting the process of reforestation, could reduce CO2 quantities.
However, CO2 in trees is not locked in forever. When they are burned, they emit all the stored CO2 back into the air, which is definitely not good. Also, as the population of people is growing, we will need to produce more and more food. Therefore, we will need to get the best ratio of land used for agriculture or forest. We could increase the efficiency of growing goods by different techniques, but that is a whole another story. If we return to this article again, we need to find long-term solutions for capturing and storing CO2. We want to emphasize that this is just one of the solutions. We realize that there is a heated debate what is the best solution for capturing and storing carbon dioxide. Our opinion is that we will need a combination of many processes to fight against climate change. However, in this article, we will present the technology that Carbfix uses.
The whole process is best described by Carbfix’s own words: “Carbfix imitates and accelerates natural processes, in which carbon dioxide is dissolved in water and interacts with reactive rock formations to form stable minerals providing a permanent and safe carbon sink. Carbfix dissolves CO2 in water, injects it into the subsurface, and turns it into stone in less than two years through proprietary technology. For the Carbfix technology to work, one needs three things: favorable rocks, water, and a source of carbon dioxide.”
Because the process uses a lot of water, Carbfix’s solution was to use reuse the same water from the same reservoir where the injection happens. This is how they reduce the water consumption in the process. The company has even created a way to dissolve CO2 in seawater, which is definitely expanding the horizon of the technology’s use. However, the first field site experimentations will be carried out in 2021.
Currently, the most effective way to store carbonized water is to inject the liquid into basalt. Why? It is very porous, therefore there is enough space to store the carbonized liquid. Not to mention its highly reactive feature shortens the process of forming the liquid into a rock. Based on Carbfix’s words basalts covers around 5% of Earth’s surface and the majority of the ocean floor. In theory, this quantity of basalt is more than enough to lock carbon dioxide from the usage of fossil fuels.
The company can extract CO2 directly from the air or it can be shipped to its facilities. Currently, the facilities are in Iceland, but it could be built in places with enough basalt underneath. With the help of a company called Climeworks, which has created technology for capturing CO2 from the air. We will present Climeworks in another article. It isn’t necessary to capture CO2 only from the place where are the Carbfix facilities. Carbon dioxide can be captured in any way possible and send to Carbfix facilities. There is then stored in the basalt.
The company has injected over 65 thousand metric tonnes of CO2 since 2014. They have figured out how to permanently and naturally store CO2. This is definitely a technique worth exploring even more! You can find out more about this technology in the following article. We are interested in finding out other techniques for capturing and storing CO2. We will explore them in our next series.
