Carbon mineralization in peridotite for CO2 removal from air and solid storage: chemo-mechanical feedbacks and kinetics

DESCRIPTION: This multidisciplinary study will establish scientifically informed advancement of CO2 solid storage methods. We’ll first refine a thermodynamic model of carbon mineralization. The LDEO rock mechanics lab will run experiments that flow CO2-containing liquid through solid rock to react, which is what would be done on a much larger scale in the Earth. We will use several methods to monitor extent of reaction during and after the experiments. We will explore means of optimizing the reaction using chemical additives that alter pH. These flow-through experiments under controlled confining and pore pressure focus on the solid volume, how volume change and pathways of reactive fluid cause cracking vs. clogging under given conditions. The experiments in the Park lab will instead focus on the dissolution and carbonation reactions themselves, isolating them in her custom reactor bed. These experiments will also focus on a chemical means of accelerating the kinetics of the process. The reaction rates determined from these experiments and the geometries and scale of cracking from the rock mechanics experiments will both feed into numerical models, providing input parameters and validations. These will be followed by models that upscale to field conditions for design of future pilot experiments in boreholes.