Carbfix claim in two years they can turn CO2 captured from the air into stone. They hope one day it will help the UK eliminate pollution.
Within the third-largest geothermal power plant in southwestern Iceland, Hellisheidi Power Station, the world-first experiment has started to collect CO2 straight from the air to turn it into stone.
This experiment is in collaboration with Swiss start-up Climeworks, which have created the technology to capture CO2 from the atmosphere and Iceland’s Carbfix who can turn CO2 into stone in less than two years. Some would say they are a match made in heaven.
Climeworks innovation CO2 collecting machine is known as Orca and works by sucking air into fabric tubes via huge fans. The air is then passed through a chemical filter specifically designed to capture CO2 while releasing other gases like oxygen and nitrogen. The system is then heated to about 100C to extract pure C02 gas.
Dr Kari Helgason who’s an astrophysicist and research and innovation head at Carbfix said:
“This is a fairly difficult and energy-intensive process, only four of every 10,000 molecules in the atmosphere are CO2 molecules. [It’s like] if your kids spilt all of their Lego on the floor, and you’re looking for four particular Lego chips out of 10,000.”
After they have captured enough CO2 Carbix can begin the process of turning it into stone using a “giant Sodastream machine”. The process is done by mixing the CO2 gas with water and injecting it deep into basalt rock, which contains elements needed for the mixture to become stone. The energy used for this process comes from a local geothermal power plant.
This project is still operating on a small scale and is capable of sucking up 4,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. It’s just a fraction of the global emissions which totalled a jaw-dropping 31.5 billion tonnes last year. At the moment, Carbfix gets the majority of its CO2 from the local geothermal plant which only creates a small amount of the gas while generating power.
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