Liam Bullock

Spanish National Research Council | CSIC · Geosciences Barcelona

EU HORIZON 2020 project at GEO3BCN-CSIC. Enhanced weathering and carbonation strategies for mine wastes, where the natural process of rock weathering and carbonate precipitation is sped up to uptake CO2, is a potentially significant sequestration method. However, on-site pilot schemes are required to fully realise the high CO2 storage potential. The EU-funded DETAILS project will address this challenge by implementing new technologies in mine wastes to reduce CO2 emissions by initiating enhanced weathering and carbonation in mine wastes through novel bioreactor technologies. This will surpass current state-of-the-art technologies by focusing on delivering on-site testing on a range of voluminous and suitable materials with industry partners. The new bioreactor system will work to modify pH and harness heat and CO2 point sources at mine sites.

This project aims to gather the lived experiences of autistic individuals within the context of geoscience-based higher education, highlighting some of the complex enablers and challenges/barriers to learning that they face. This broad discipline is incredibly diverse in its sub-disciplines, themes, nomenclatures, activities, expectations, and teaching styles/environments, creating a subject area where different learners can have significantly different journeys. Through this dataset, we aim to identify key areas of success and difficulty, as perceived by autistic individuals, and create guidance and resources to support geoscience educators in the consideration and mitigation of challenges for autistic individuals.

To limit the increase in global temperature to less than 2 °C, “negative emissions”, or the active removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, are required. Weathering, the chemical breakdown (dissolution) of rocks at the Earth’s surface, is a natural process that converts atmospheric carbon dioxide into carbonate minerals or hydrogen carbonate and carbonate ions (“alkalinity”). If the weathering process can be speeded up, or enhanced, then levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide would fall. Mining of precious commodities, such as diamonds and gold, provides a continuous supply of freshly ground up rock material which, under the right conditions, could be easily weathered, removing atmospheric CO2 in the process. Our project aims to provide critical knowledge to answer the following questions: Are rocks left over from extracting precious metals suitable for capturing carbon dioxide on human timescales? Are there low-cost engineering solutions that can be used to accelerate the weathering process? How much carbon dioxide could potentially be captured? We are addressing these questions through identification of the most easily weatherable mine waste materials, the testing of physical, chemical and biological methods for speeding up weathering kinetics, and an investigation into the availability of (suitable) rock materials at mine sites on a national and global scale. Our work will assess the technical, environmental and societal challenges involved in assessing the potential of enhanced weathering as a carbon sequestration technology. We will do this through: 1. Assessment of the worldwide potential of the mining sector for carbon dioxide removal through enhanced weathering based on a global industry desktop study. 2. Development of a detailed dataset for the enhanced weathering and carbon dioxide storage potentials of chemically-favourable mine waste material in South Africa. 3. Characterisation of available rock waste material (quantity, location, mineralogy, geochemistry, and grainsize) and naturally occurring microbial communities naturally thriving in a platinum mine in South Africa. 4. Laboratory experimentation and assessment of the rates of break-down of representative rock waste material. 5. Developing a biotechnological approach to harness naturally occurring microbial processes to enhance weathering rates of mine waste material.