With the prestigious Earthshot Prize, the Omani start-up 44.01 gained further momentum and hopes to take its carbon-capture technology global.
For Peter Kelemen, a geologist at the Earth Institute and Columbia Climate School, who is also the chief of the Scientific Committee at 44.01, the goal is to harness and speed up the study to remove carbon on an industrial scale.
In an interview with Science News at the Earth Institute and Columbia Climate School, Kelemen said that the company is now planning two much larger pilot projects, both expected to take place in 2023.
“We’ve obtained government permits and run some small pilot projects at a former scientific drilling site. We are now planning two much larger pilot projects, both expected to take place in 2023. Ideally, we would achieve substantial results before the COP28 meeting in the UAE, in 2023,” Kelemen said in the interview with Kevin Krajick of Earth Institute, Columbia.
Kelemen has been working in the desert of Oman for more than 15 years to study natural chemical reactions within rare deep-earth rocks that pull carbon from the air and lock it into solid mineral form.
Based in large part on his research, Omani entrepreneurs formed 44.01, a company working to scale up and commercialise the processes. The company was just awarded a $1.2-million Earthshot Prize by Prince William, in a televised ceremony in Boston.
Talal Hasan, founder of 44.01, had earlier said winning the Earthshot Prize was “a proud moment” for his team. Named after the molecular mass of CO2, 44.01 promises to turn carbon dioxide into peridotite, a rock that is found in abundance both in Oman and globally, including the US, Europe and Asia.
“Eventually, we hope, some government or group of governments would pay them to lock up the carbon, at a rate of maybe $30 a tonne. Globally, such costs end up being a few percent of GDP, comparable to the current costs of solid waste management,” he said.
To a question as to what difficulties the project might face, Kelemen said that the main concern is that the rocks are not very porous. That leads to two difficulties. One, it can be difficult to get fluids to circulate rapidly through the rocks, and two, the pore space might eventually clog up with newly formed carbonate minerals.
However, the geologist said, “We are inspired by the fact that in some places the rocks have naturally become fully carbonated. That is, every magnesium and calcium atom in them has combined with CO2 to create solid minerals. So we know this can happen, and we have ideas about how it works.”
The company has done theoretical calculations and conducted experiments at the laboratory scale. “But in the end, only field scale experiments will allow us to refine methods to do this at a reasonable cost,” he said.
In addition to forming solid carbonate minerals, the reaction of surface waters with mantle rocks can form free hydrogen gas. It is widely viewed as a potential replacement for fossil fuels, specifically natural gas and oil, for transportation and home heating. And if derived at a low cost from natural sources, it could also be used to generate electricity.
To another question whether he would continue research in Oman or elsewhere, Kelemen said, “We are continuing academic research on the rate of hydrogen formation, and studying ways that could be accelerated. In the United States and Canada, we are also investigating how some mining ores could not only lock up carbon but help with the extraction of nickel and cobalt — essential ingredients that will be used extensively in electric vehicles and renewable energy generation in the next few decades.”
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
