Scientists from CSIRO—Australia’s national science agency—are gathering valuable evidence that could carve a path for the development of CO2 mineralization as a storage solution in Australia.

Conventional carbon capture and storage (CCS) stores captured CO2 by injecting it deep underground and relying on pressure and geology to keep it there. This approach carries leakage risks, through which the CO2 stored as a gas or a supercritical fluid could be released back into the air.

Carbon mineralization, on the other hand, involves dissolving CO2 in water and injecting the solution into reactive volcanic rocks, where the CO2 reacts with the rock to form stable solid carbonate minerals, practically converting the carbon into stone.

Drawing from the experience of Carbfix, who successfully achieved carbon mineralization within two years by injecting CO2-saturated water into highly permeable basalt formations in Iceland, Dr. Lionel Esteban, a petrophysicist in CSIRO’s Energy Research Program, has set out to examine the conditions and specificities of potentially deploying this method in Australian sites.

Dr. Esteban’s work is part of a comprehensive assessment, which also includes the work of Senior Research Scientist Dr. Mihaela Grigore and Dr. Saeed Salimzadeh. 

Together, the researchers are taking a three-pronged approach to evaluate CO2 mineralization conditions in Australia, working on bulk experimental characterization, pore-scale imaging, and hydromechanical modelling.

The team of Dr. Esteban floods core samples of Australian ultramafic rocks under conditions that simulate shallow reservoirs, typically located around 500 m deep with 50 bar pressure and a temperature of 60°C, tracking what happens during the test using imaging, geochemical analysis, and petrophysical measurement.

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