Fangst og mineralisering af CO2 ved hjælp af saltlage

Two of the world's major challenges are to reduce CO2 emissions and to provide clean water for households, agriculture, vegetation and for production of green hydrogen. In many places, potable water is produced by desalination of seawater, whereby a concentrated brine is produced as a by-product. Research has shown that CO2 can react with this brine to form minerals that can be stored or incorporated into cement or other building materials. Optimizing the energy consumption for all the connected processes is crucial and not a trivial task. It is for example possible to reduce the size of the mineralization reactor by delivering a more concentrated brine and a purer CO2, but this will require more energy in the desalination and carbon capture processes.

The goal of this project is to better understand the mineralization processes in order to optimize and demonstrate this CCU technology. One challenge is to produce a sufficiently concentrated brine for efficient and rapid reaction with CO2 to form solid magnesite as a mineral. The size and energy consumption of the mineralization reactor will be reduced if it is fed with a more concentrated brine and a cleaner CO2 gas, which is why the choice of technologies for CO2 capture and desalination also is important.

The project is a CETP partnership between 11 universities and companies. Production of both fresh water and cement is widespread worldwide and associated with very high energy consumption and emissions, so there are great prospects in combining the processes.