The Earthshot Prize winner will scale up its CO2 mineralization technology in the UAE with support from ADNOC following a successful pilot. Image by boggy22 via iStock
Earthshot Prize-winning company 44.01 will scale up its carbon dioxide (CO2) mineralization technology in the United Arab Emirates with support from Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC) following a successful pilot, the companies said Tuesday.
On December 5, 2023, Oman-based 44.01 announced what it called the world's first mineralization project that uses seawater to inject CO2 into peridotite rock formations. This pilot project, located in the Emirate of Fujairah, had support from ADNOC, Masdar and Fujairah Natural Resources Corp.
The project has been successfully completed, permanently mineralizing 10 tonnes of CO2 within Fujairah's peridotite formations in under 100 days, the companies told the ongoing ADIPEC exhibition and conference in the UAE capital.
"Building on this achievement, the first phase of scale-up will inject more than 300 tonnes of CO2 over a longer duration to demonstrate the potential of the technology to be deployed at scale in the UAE", ADNOC said in an online statement.
"At scale, peridotite mineralization could eliminate billions of tons of carbon emissions, helping decarbonize vital industries and remove CO2 from the atmosphere", it added.
44.01 chief executive Talal Hasan, who co-founded the startup in 2020, said, "Our pilot project with ADNOC demonstrated the viability of carbon mineralization in the UAE".
"We are pleased to be collaborating on scaling up operations and continuing to refine our technology on the way to demonstrating commerciality".
Ali Qasem, director-general of Fujairah Natural Resources, said, "We are committed to supporting such innovative technologies that strengthen our efforts to achieve sustainable development goals".
"The presence of peridotite formations in Fujairah offers unique potential to implement projects like this on a large scale, helping us reduce our carbon footprint and support environmental strategies", Ali added.
ADNOC chief technology officer Sophie Hildebrand said, "Carbon capture is an important tool to reduce carbon emissions and meet global climate goals and we look forward to scaling up this project and confirming the commercial viability of carbon mineralization".
44.01, also known as Protostar Group Ltd., says its technology works by accelerating the millennia-long process of CO2 mineralization to under a year. The mineralized CO2 no longer escapes into the atmosphere, according to the company.
It aims to capture industry CO2 emissions and dissolve the CO2 in water that people can't consume such as treated wastewater and seawater. "Dissolve CO₂ in water creates a kind of sparkling water", it explains on its website. "This sparkling water, or injection fluid, is acidic and mobilizes cations within the rock that react with the CO2 and mineralize it". 44.01 uses rocks that react naturally with CO2 such as peridotites.
"The injection fluid is injected deep underground, far deeper than any underground sources of drinking water", says 44.01, named after the molecular mass of CO2. "The fluid is denser than any water in the subsurface, meaning it can't rise back towards the surface. Underground, because of increased pressure and temperature, and because of the high concentration of CO2 in the injection fluid, the mineralization reaction takes place very quickly.
"The carbonated injection fluid spreads into the rock deep underground. The injection fluid is acidic and when this acidic fluid makes contact with the rock it dissolves minerals and extracts ions that react with the CO₂ to create carbonates, or more rock".
44.01 won the 2022 Earthshot Prize for the technology. This year, 44.01 and Aircapture's Project Hajar, which aims to capture CO2 from the atmosphere for injection in Oman's peridotite rocks, was chosen as a top-20 finalist of the XPRIZE Carbon Removal contest. Oman is believed to have the globe's largest concentration of peridotites.