14 DAY TRIAL // Geologists have known for many years that the dangerous greenhouse gas carbon dioxide can be locked away in deposits of calcium carbonate, but it's only now that they are beginning to investigate ways of actually doing that at a large scale.
Calcium carbonate is one of the most abundant chemicals on the face of the planet, that exists in numerous forms. These structures range from messy to extremely-well organized.
Researchers at the University of California in Davis (UCD) reveal that the latter form of the mineral can be used to tuck away CO2 for millennia to millions of years, PhysOrg reports.
“Calcium carbonate is the major long-term sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide,” explains Alexandra Navrotsky, a researcher in the new study.
She reveals that beautiful calcite crystals could be used as a major carbon sink, which could have the same effects as phytoplankton in the oceans or trees and vegetation on land.
Navrotsky is the Edward Roessler Chair in Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the UCD, and also a distinguished professor of ceramic, earth and environmental materials at the university.
Given that there seems to be little international will to create an understanding that would lead to a reduction in CO2 output over the coming decades, researchers need to concentrate their efforts on mitigating the coming effects.
As pollution increases, so will the consequences of climate change. These effects include rising sea levels, melting ice sheets, more floods and droughts, more intense tropical storms, and altered precipitation patterns.
A global effort is needed to capture as much of the released CO2 as possible, and geoengineering schemes are already proposing using iron particles to boost phytoplankton blooms, or releasing aerosols to block out incoming sunlight.
But it may be that using calcium carbonate is an equally effective method of alleviating the impacts of various greenhouse gases on the planet's atmosphere.
The CO2 gas could in the future be extracted from the fumes of power plants, and then injected as dense gas underground. Eventually, under the action of natural processes, the gas would turn into solid calcium carbonate.
“By measuring the heat liberated during these transformations, we can study the process by which carbon dioxide is trapped and transformed to stable carbonate minerals,” Navrotsky reveals.
The expert is also the lead author of a new paper detailing the findings, which is published in this week's issue of the esteemed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).