A clean energy firm has said it will do in an hour what the Earth achieves in geological time – and decarbonise the industry in the process.
MCi Carbon, an Australian company that won the clean energy start-up prize at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, plans to build a plant in 2028 that, it hopes, will not only capture 50,000 tonnes of CO₂ a year from industrial processes, but will turn it into building materials.
It is doing so by speeding up geology. Given time, minerals such as magnesium and calcium react with CO₂ to make carbonates. With the MCi Carbon system, “reaction time has come down to a matter of minutes”.
A slurry of mineral waste from heavy industry or mining waste has gas bubbled through it. Depending on the mineral composition, the resulting product can be used to make paper, plasterboard and cement.
