Of all the planet-warming greenhouse gases human activity releases into the atmosphere, carbon dioxide is themost significant emission.
Now, researchers at Stanford University have proposed a surprisingly practical strategy: make rocks do it for us.
As detailed in astudypublished Wednesday in the journalNature, the process is practical and low-cost.
Yuxuan Chen holds the product of their CO2 capturing process next to Matt Kanan.© Bill Rivard / Precourt Institute for Energy
Our work solves this problem in a way that we think is uniquely scalable.
Kanan and Chen seem to have cracked the code by converting common slow-weathering minerals called silicates into fast-weathering minerals.
Ions are atoms or groups of atoms with an electrical charge.
We didnt expect that it would work as well as it does.
The chemists replicated this process, but swapped sand out for a material called a magnesium silicate.
The process acts as a multiplier, said Kanan.
To test their results, Kanan and Chen exposed wet calcium silicate and magnesium oxide to air.
They turned into carbonate mineralsthe result of weatheringwithin weeks to months.
One exciting utility that were testing now is adding them to agricultural soil.
Additionally, the silicates could be recovered from mine tailings (mining leftovers).
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