Turning Carbon Dioxide Into Stone

about the future of stone tools. Yeah, I think they're really going to make a comeback. Let me tell you is where it's at. Guys, if you're not on the bronze train, you are really missing out. Actually very fashionable these days. Well, why are we going to be talking about box today? So we wanted to look into a

strategy for dealing with carbon dioxide emissions. Now, as I'm sure our listeners are aware, carbon dioxide is a one of several greenhouse gases, right is It's the primary one that is created by the activity of that we humans tend to undertake throughout the world. Uh, And so there's been a lot of discussion about reducing carbon dioxide emissions, but not just not just that, how can we deal

with the carbon dioxide emissions we're currently generating? Is there anything we could do to offset that in any way? And one of the possible ways we could do that is by mineralizing carbon dioxides. So we wanted to kind of take a look at that. What does that entail, why is it important in the first place, and what are the possibilities for the future. So first we should kind of just cover the ground about carbon dioxide, it's role as a greenhouse gas, What does that actually mean?

How does that affect us? Yeah, because when we say that it's the primary greenhouse gas according to the Environmental Protection Agency, it accounts for of the greenhouse gases in our in or the greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. And it's not necessarily the most potent greenhouse gas, but it's the most important important because it's the most abundant. Right.

So you can look at different greenhouse gases and you'll see that different ones may absorb, first of all, greenhouse gas, it creates the greenhouse effect, right, this idea of retaining heat close to the Earth, which is a natural part of what happens in our atmosphere, and if we didn't have it, we would not be doing so well. Right. We need we need some of that greenhouse effect in order to retain heat and make the planet habitable and

let plants do stuff, you know, things like that. Yeah, so it's not like we don't want any greenhouse gas, but we have too much of it exactly. So the Industrial revolution we have been accidentally geoengineering our planet by changing the balance of dispersed gases in the atmosphere, increasing the ratio of these carbon based gases that increase the greenhouse effect, trapping more heat, warming the surface of the planet,

melting ice, changing ecosystems, killing species, changing weather patterns. It's obvious at this point you know why this matters, right, And it's definitely an industrial issue. It's it's it's not happening because of the pasta we're eating. Um, it's it's it's it's because of like pre industrial society. Of course, they weren't taking detailed molecular readings on the atmosphere at that point. But but researchers think that that we've seen

CEO two levels increased by what since pre industrial times. Yeah, we're talking about thirty billion tons of carbon dioxide released from human activities every year. Yeah. And and there are ways of knowing what the carbon dooc side levels in the atmosphere were like before industrial times. For example, you can look at ancient ice cores or sediment cores. They are all kinds of ways of looking for clues about

what the atmosphere was like in the past. Right, And and carbon dioxide has a cycle where it can be removed from the atmosphere. But we're seeing a real problem and that not only are we dumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we're removing a lot of the carbon dioxide sinks where we would normally see some of that CEO to get reabsorbed into the cycle where it's not

it's no longer in the atmosphere, all right. When you've got a lot of trees around, they're pulling carbon dioxide out of the air and turning it into more tree. But when you have people cutting down a whole lot of forests in order to do very important things to be fair, uh, you just have less of that carbon capture going on. That an amazing thing to think about. You walk through a forest and you think where did the mass of these trees come from? Mostly it came

from the air, air, and water. So that Yeah, the primary atoms that are making up the cells of these trees are carbon, and the carbon came from carbon dioxide that was in the atmosphere. It's it's a phenomenal thing to think about. And beyond that, you know there's carbon trapped in other ways too. I mean, you know you hear about like coal burning coal and that releases carbon dioxide. Well before that, the carbon dioxide was part of the coal.

It was captured, it was it was in a form that was not going to leak out and escape into the atmosphere on its own. Oh so I wonder if we could do something about our problem with an excess of atmospheric carbon dioxide by just making that into more coal. Yeah, you mean, like kind of reversing the process. Can't we get all that stuff and make some rocks, like smush it together really hard, mineralizing it essentially? The basic technical about it, I guess mineralizing share The basic answer to

your question is we can. We can kind of do that thing. It's not so much as making coal as it is finding a method to convert CEO two from the gas form into a mineral form. But it's actually I hesitate to use the word easy. It's it's simple in the fact that it does not require, uh, a huge number of steps, right, not a processing It's simple in theory and in practice it's hard, sure and well

and mostly just expensive to get started. Um. But we'd like to talk to you guys today specifically about this one research project that's been going on in Iceland that recently published some really interesting results that they've had. And the story came in from a listener of the Now

podcast by the name of Patrick. Thank you Patrick, UM And yeah, yeah, so it's it's about this team of icelandic American and French researchers who are working together in Iceland because Iceland happens to have an area conditions that are just so extremely well suited to their work. Yeah. It turns out that this uh, it's kind of like a pilot project, and that pilot project is it's located in pretty much the perfect spot to test out this

particular approach. UH. And we'll get into more details and explain why it's so ideal. But let's talk a little bit about this team. Uh, well, we should mention the paper itself. Yes, the name of the so the paper was published in Science in June right around but yeah, it was called rapid Carbon Mineralization for Permanent Disposal of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. And I'm guessing that the operative word in the title there is rapid because as you said,

we can. We can turn c O two into minerals. We have the power to do that. But I'm guessing it's not easy and it's not quick. Well, I mean it, it happens naturally over time. But by over time we're talking like spans of thousands of years. Now. On a geological scale, that's nothing. Yeah, that's fine, but for we humans,

that's a darn long time. We want things to be changed. Now. Yeah, it's it's tough to say, like, hey, the improvements we're gonna make, we're not going to see any results from that. But people or people like things in a thousand years will totally enjoy our effort. The crab monsters that take over this planet will benefit greatly from our efforts. And we we can't even wait to to make an entire box of macaroni and cheese we need easy MAC what

is the MAC version of carbonization? So the expert who is sort of the the head of this, or at least the person who has often been associated with it, is your mater, and mater has been seen like his work has seen not just here in this particular instance, this Iceland project, there's also a project in the United States I'll talk about a little bit later that he consulted on. So he's definitely at the forefront of this

this sort of research and this methodology. And so his whole um hypothesis was that we could use a particular approach to speed up the natural cycle of carbon dioxide. You could make it turn into a mineral much more quickly using a specific methodology. Now, what he was looking at was a type of carbon capture and storage or carbon capture and sequestration, that's CCS. You'll see that term pretty frequently. Sequestration. Isn't that such a euphemistic sounding word.

It's like when you you send somebody to prison, you're just sequestering them. Well, you know, I it's funny because when I think of the word, the first thing that pops in my mind, even though it's not necessarily ever used in that context is how do we deal with nuclear waste? Right? The idea of of not just capturing it, but putting it away where it cannot harm people. Uh. In this case, we're talking about trying to capture carbon dioxide and locking it in a form where it's not

going to leak back out into the atmosphere. That that was a chief concern in all of these different approaches that people have been trying with ccs. How can you capture carbon dioxide and converted into a form that is uh economically viable In other words, it's not gonna cost so much to do it that no one is ever going to put forth the money to actually go forward

with a project. How can it be easy and safe enough so that you don't have to worry about putting anyone in danger as a result of this um And how can it be effective so that you're not just having c O two leak right back into the atmosphere despite your efforts. Even if that's a small percentage, it's

still a problem. Right If you say, well, this approach is only six effective because the CEO two goes back in the atmosphere, then you're you're looking at not good return exactly exactly this this benefit of are we actually better off using this approach than we would be if we tried something else, like just reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

So the approach they used specifically in this case was dissolving carbon dioxide into water, So you get busy water essentially carbonated water essentially, and then injecting that carbonated water into basaltic rock basaltic rock. You say, yeah, well, here, here's the thing. Basaltic rock is porous, Okay, pockets, It's got a little pockets in it, so you can inject those pockets with this, uh, this carbon dioxide water solution,

and then you end up getting a chemical reaction. Basalt also has stuff like calcium and magnesium in it, so you get this CEO two solution reacting with that, and eventually that mineralizes into what is essentially limestone. And limestone is very stable. You don't have to worry about that breaking down and releasing carbon dioxide right back into the atmosphere um and it locks it away. You can. As soon as that mineralizes, you're good to go. The question is how long will it take for the CEO too

to actually undergo this process? Now? There have been people who before this project was underway, we're guessing that that would be a matter of decades that you would be pumping water into the basalt, and maybe twenty years you might see a good return, like a decent percentage of that would be mineralized. But that turns out to be way too pessimistic, because according to Mater and his work over in Iceland, they saw that more than of the c O two they had pumped into the basalt as

a pilot project had mineralized in just two years. Yeah, like like so much of it. It is a remarkable return, something that suggests that this approach could be an incredible um option for certain situations. And we'll get into why that's. You know, I have to put that qualifiers. It's not it's not perfect, but but it is still an exciting development,

especially because of the scale of it. It's not like they took like like three said, and tried to do something like it and blow into a paper bag and shove. That's a little bit more more involved in light the bag on fire and put it on your doors and knock on your door and run away. And it wasn't was knock knock, it's climate change, the classic scientific prank. Um,

No that it was. It was not that case. So I mentioned earlier that this particular project was kind of an ideal realization of this approach, and here's what I mean by that. First, the project is co located with a geothermal energy plant in Iceland that is on top of basaltic rock. Right, so you've already got the stuff you need right there. Iceland is essentially made of basaltic rock, yeah,

which is not the norm for most areas. And well that's part of the reason why we put those qualifiers on this approach, but they had a plenty of basalt to work with. Is a geothermal plant that also generates carbon dioxide. Not all geothermal plants do, but this one does, and it's at the tune of forty thousand tons of the stuff every year, which is, you know, still low

compared to other types of power plants. Oh yeah, absolutely, Like if you're looking at a cold power plant, you're talking about three point five million tons of carbon dioxide per year. But but anything that you can reduce is great, yes, And so the important part is that they were they had a plant where they could capture the carbon dioxide emissions right from the generation, right, so they're capturing it at the source from the normal plant, the thermal plant

also to go out with the net. Yeah. Yeah, a couple of ziploc bags and a lot of heart and moxi no um. So they had the CEO two source right there. But also because it's a geo thermal plant, in order for them to access the the heat that is at the heart of the production of electricity, the plant had to drill bore holes down into the basalt. Well, if you're going to inject c O two into basalt, you need to drill bore holes down into the rock itself so you can pump the water down. So they

were already bought bar holes. No, no need to spend money on all that drilling, right. Yeah. It's it's like, well, this is this is perfect because we would have had to do this anyway, but they already exist, so we don't have to do it ourselves. So they had the source of the CEO two, they had the basaltic rock, they had the holes they needed. All they really had

to do at that point. And I again, when I say all they really had to do, this is still a lot of work, but it's much less than what they would have had to do if none of these other things existed. No, I think it was easy. Yeah, they had to dissolve the c O two into water. You know, you should really be ashamed of themselves over an Icelander. Who knows what else they're doing, right, I mean, it's just a world of mystery to me. I know nothing about the place. Uh, you just did, didn't you, Joe?

What do people do besides pump c O two into the rocks over in Iceland, gawk and how beautiful the world is, and and eat the best hot dogs on earth? They have these hot dogs at every gas station in Iceland called pilser that are they're the same everywhere you go, not exactly the same, but like the recipes pretty much the same, and they're they're cheap and they're awesome. Well, now we know while they're not making hot dogs and consuming them, they're apparently pumping the c O two into

the basaltic rock. Their first approach was to try and do this with about two fifty tons of c O two, and that is from two thousand twelve to two thirteen. In two thousand fifteen, once they were able to see that this program did appear to be working. They stepped it up to five thousand tons of carbon dioxide. So uh, that's still obviously a deficit to the amount that's being generated just by this one geo thermal plant. They hope to hit ten thousand tons by the end of this year.

Still a deficit because we were talking about forty tho tons generated each year. But the progress is very promising, and the fact that that CEO two isn't going anywhere is a great story. Oh yeah, yeah, it's still and again like offsetting any of this is a win. Yes, but now we get into the drawbacks. Here's the reason why we put a lot of qualifications on this. Now, this is not to take anything away from this project. I I love to say they should be ashamed. I am.

I'm kidding very much. No, this is really this is really good science, limited by geography and and and and six. But still, come on, guys, you could have stepped it up. No, no, this this The problem is that this approach, even as effective as it is, is very tricky to do in most places. Right, Iceland was again the perfect place because you had that basaltic rock right there. The real issue

is that basaltic rock is it's plentiful. It's just not plentiful any place where there happens to be, you know, dry ground. Yeah, most of it is under the sea floor. Yes, So in order for you to access the basalt, you would have to drill down into the sea floor, which obviously creates other hurdles, other engineering challenges, and increases the cost of that solution, right. Uh. Furthermore, it requires a whole lot of water to to carry out the process. Yeah. So for every ton of c O two, they uh,

they estimate that it takes twenty five tons of water. Now, we've done other episodes of about water, Like we did one called Water Water Everywhere, and we did another one called the Circle of H two O. Both of those published in two thousand thirteen. And you remember, if you listen to those episodes, we talked about how water is a very precious resource. Fresh water is a very precious resource, fresh clean water, I mean. And the issue, of course

it's complicated, right. The water is not leaving earth, it's just not it's just not necessarily in the places where people need it. Yeah, yeah, and and that can that can become super problematic Also, the ratio of fresh water to seawater to saltwater um is not quite what it would be nice for us. It's great, great for the fish, Yeah, not so much for us necessarily. Yeah, that's that's a

real issue. And and they and they haven't tested this out with seawater, right that it may work with sea water, and if it does, that removes that particular problem, or at least reduces it. Because another issue is that some of the places that would stand to benefit the most from this approach have the least access to fresh water or at least disposable fresh water. Also, I'm not using tons of water today. Yeah, so let's get rid of

that one ton of c O two. Uh. And and also you know if they if those areas aren't located near like a like the ocean, and they don't have any basaltic rock under the ground in those areas, then that that means you have to have transportation, right, You've got to transport the CEO two after you've captured it to a place where you can then dissolve it in water and pump it down into the basalt. I guess

you transport it in an electric car. I mean, yeah, that's but that really that does and and you've got to hope the the place that's generating the electricity is doing so in a way that isn't dumping yet more CEO two in the atmosphere. This shows how complicated this problem is, right, that this is a non trivial problem in multiple ways, not just in the scale, but also how how we can actually tackle it in a way

that ultimately is hopeful. Now, one thing I do want to come back on is that I don't see you. Maybe you could explain to me what you're thinking of it. I don't see what the problem is. If they can use seawater, like I don't think there's really any shortage of seawater, and it's not that they wouldn't need to. Well, if they can use seawater, that definitely reduces the problem dramatically. But for places that are far inland that still have a lack of fresh water, that that would still be

an issue. Right, So you think of like lots of mainland China or India, places that may be miles and miles away from the closest ocean, and so you still are yet right, you still have some real problems there.

I mean uh. And and also you'd have to watch out with anytime you're gathering that much water to use it an industrial application, you have to watch out for for where that water is coming from and how it's affecting, how it's removal is affecting the environ meant that you're removing it from CC above reefish you know, like like fish probably want some of that. I think we just have to accept that here and there, some fish are going to get injected into the basaltic rock. It's really

gonna mess up future. Look at look at the fish fossils here. It's not supposed to be there. What's going on? Weird? It's almost like almost like people were more fish appeared on Earth, forcefully throwing fish into the ground in limestone, limestone encrusted fish. They ate very strangely. Oh man, I could go for some seafood right now. So one of the other things to point out is even if you were to have the ideal situation as the project in

Iceland seems to be, it's still pretty expensive. It's more expensive than other methods of carbon injection. Dr Hotter said that it costs about seventeen dollars per ton of carbon dioxide, whereas other methods range closer to between five and ten

dollars per ton. So, and that's in Iceland. Obviously, if you were to try and build a facility out offshore facility that's pushing c O two down into the sea floor, that would probably be even more expensive per ton, you would imagine, I mean, just the building the infrastructure alone would be incredibly expensive. So the question then becomes, does it still make financial sense to go with this approach

versus some other approach? Knowing that the problem is there either way, right, we need a solution to the problem. Just which solution makes the most sense economically, because we can't just ignore that factor. I wish we could, because that would be awesome if we didn't have to worry about how much stuff costs. Arguably we would have a lot more solutions to some of the biggest problems we face today. But we do have to worry about that now.

There's another pilot program am I mentioned this earlier that's going on here in the United States, and it's in Wallula, Washington, and it's along of basalt deposit on the banks of the Columbia River. So we have a similar project underway here um and that that project the cost was around two point two billion dollars at least that's what the estimated cost was when they proposed it. I have no

idea how much it actually ended up costing. In fact, this particular project was a little difficult to research because it was one of those that got proposed. It was ramping up to go into full on execution. Then the cord was plugged. They plugged, the cord was pulled, unplugged, the whole thing fell apart, is what I'm trying to say.

But brain, no work, no more. So the project was defunded, right, it was canceled, But then initial work began anyway, A and A proposal was written again, and that by two thousand thirteen, the pilot pro program was actually working. Now that they had started this in the early two thousand's, arguing for it, planning for it, getting funding for it, and then it got canceled. But in two thousand and

thirteen it got started again. So we're at a point now where we should expect an update for this project, but it hasn't. But the website hasn't been updated. I

couldn't tell. I went to the website and I looked for for recent news, and the most recent update I could see came from two thousand fourteen, and according to what I saw, they said there was no significant carbon dioxide leakage from the injection site, which is great news, but there was nothing to say, you know what percentage of it appears to have been mineralized since they started

the project. I didn't see any information along those lines, so nothing that would verify the Iceland projects results using a totally different well not a different approach, but a

different location. Right, So I'm hoping to see another update, and you know, some sometimes this kind of thing happens, like like as scientists are gathering the data for their research and and pulling it all together, so sometimes you'll you'll see drop offs and updates right before they publish something, and and it's, yeah, it's It's also possible that it's one of those things where you know, they have certain staff in charge of updating the website, and who are

who might turn over. Maybe they are students who have graduated and moved on, and it may be that they just didn't ever replace those folks to continue that part. It may be the project itself is completely on track. I just don't know about it. No one would return my phone calls, so I didn't call them some anti social um. But yeah, I I think it's interesting that this is not you know, the Iceland Project is not

the only place where this is being tasted. It's it's great and it's and it's so um inspiring to to see this kind of thinking applied to this really massive problem. Right.

And if it's if it's something that can be scaled up and something that can work on a more widespread basis, maybe we could see potentially a leveling off of the amount of c O two emissions that we uh, like the net gain and CEO two emissions we see over a year, and possibly even not just a reduction from from the fact that we're you know, using less fossil fuels, but a reduction because of being able to capture and mineralize. Right.

And it's certainly not an excuse to leave your lights on all night and you know whatever other terrible just you know, sitting just burning coal for no reason, sitting and sitting in your car with the car on, yeah, for seven hours. Uh, I mean, you know, my car is a c works really well and it's hot outside. Is pretty is really hot outside today. I don't know if you all have been out in the middle of

the day. I try not to be because I walk in the morning and in the afternoon, and I don't want to go through any more of that than I already do. Earlier, I was standing in the sun and the it was on my shirt, and my shirt felt like a hot stove top. It was just crazy. Yeah. See, now, that would be nice if we could reduce some of those greenhouse gases and us over time reduce the amount

of heat. Yeah. So obviously, this whole idea of capturing carbon, of reducing the greenhouse gases that we're releasing into the atmosphere as wide ranging consequences, you know, the idea of of trying to reduce the amount of climate change we expect to see over the next several years. Even even if we were to get a real good handle on this right now, we know that those changes are going to continue. It's not like there's just a switch that

we could flip and then everything of be fine. But we do need to take some steps to to at least mitigate those effects and potentially decrease the amount of time that we will experience, uh, you know, non ideal climate in lots of parts of the world. Uh. So I'm very much encouraged by this project, even though there

there are these big limitations that we've pointed out. And I've always said that being an optimist, in my view, means not just hoping for the best, but also acknowledging the challenges that are in the way so that we might overcome them and not just become discouraged when we encounter them. So here's hoping that this this project continues, that's able to scale up even further. Perhaps we're able to see related projects in other parts of the world, and uh, it might be uh one good strategy for

dealing with carbon dioxide. I doubt it's ever going to become the only or even the primary one, but it could would certainly help. Right, it's not it's definitely not hurting to capture some of that serio mineralizing. Absolutely, so this was really cool. Big thanks again to Patrick who wrote into now and and suggested this topic. We don't mind appropriating it for ourselves because I mean, we work

on now so we're fine with taking that stuff. Yeah. Absolutely, And uh and if you guys have not checked out the Now podcast. Its official title is How Stuff Works Now, which is impossible to google, but if you would like to tune in, head on over to Now dot how stuff Works dot com um or you know, try try try searching for it on whatever podcast thing you like.

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