What is Mineral Carbonation?
Mineral carbonation is the reaction of carbon dioxide (CO2) with basic minerals to form harmless solid carbonates, similar to chalk, antacids or baking soda. Mineral carbonation occurs in nature as the process of rock weathering by rainwater. Geologists believe that over millions of years this process reduced the excessive CO2 in the prehistoric atmosphere to levels that enable life to survive today. Our aim has been simply to mimic and accelerate this natural process to reduce harmful industrial emissions of CO2.
MCi's Process
MCi has developed its mineral carbonation technology by making breakthroughs in multiple process paths and reactor designs that integrate together as a carbon platform. This platform can be adapted to a range of mineral carbonation configurations allowing it to be used in several industrial settings and be tuned to optimise the profitability of a Carbon Plant.
MCi needs three basic elements for its solution to be feasible:
CO2 source: We are usually located at a source of CO2 . MCi can work with most sources of CO2 pure captured or dilute streams from flue gas.
Feedstocks: MCi's carbon platform can use a variety of mineral feedstocks and industrial wastes, like steel slag and mine tailings that are rich in magnesium or calcium. These react with the CO2 and convert it into solid materials.
Markets: These solid materials have sale value in markets and can be used in various low carbon products. Having offtake customers and product markets are important factors that drive the profitability of our solution for our customers.
Carbon capture is a general term used to describe a wide variety of technology solutions to reduce, avoid or remove carbon emissions from the atmosphere.All solutions require the removal of CO2 from a source either from industry or the atmosphere. These are known as CO2 capture technologies.The bigger challenge is either store it underground (CCS) or create value from it (CCU) on a scale to meet our climate targets.
