The Kraftwerk Westfallen coal-burning power plant is pictured on May 23, 2011 in Hamm, Germany. (Photo : Getty Images/Lars Baron)
Iceland has discovered an innovative way to handle climate change, global warming and the increasing levels of pollution that lead to such environmental problems. The first of its own kind of power plant in Iceland has devised a method to turn carbon emission into stones.
The team working on the innovation achieved this breakthrough, published in the journal Science, in just a few years. Usually, it takes a lot of time for the researchers to think through such an innovation and make it operate in reality. The project, dubbed CarbFix, collaborates engineers and scientists from different universities across the world and Reykjavik Energy, the Icelandic energy company.
The technique used by the researchers buries carbon in basalt rock. Basalt is one of the most common rocks found all around the globe. Thus, there are high chances of this technology to be scaled up and used across different industries in the world.
"The current consensus is that it would take up to thousands of years to mineralize CO2," Sigurdur Gislason, co-author of the study, told CNBC. "But we can show you can mineralize CO2 within two years. That is pretty amazing, because mineralizing is the safest way of storing CO2."
The researchers working on the CarbFix project have been trying to inject water and carbon dioxide into an underground well lined by basalt. The well is situated near Iceland's Hellisheidi geothermal power plant.
In fact, capturing carbon dioxide and sequestering it to an underground source has been discussed in the past as one of the promising ways to reduce the emissions. However, this is the first time that a research team has been practically able to do that.
Different ways to sequester the gas have also been discussed, including the use of empty underground aquifers, unminable coal seams and old oil wells. However, the novel method devised by the team in Iceland makes use of carbon dioxide mixed with water. The mixture is injected into an underground basalt rock.
The basalt rock, in turn, reacts with underground minerals to produce a new form a solid rock that does not leak. In addition, it does not pose any kind of threat to the environment.
The following video talks about the CarbFix project:
