Application
Uses building and industrial waste material to provide a fast, efficient, and safe way to store carbon in a stable mineral form.
Our Innovation
Our method for carbon storage reacts concrete building waste, or industrial waste (e.g., fly ash, gypsum), that contains silicate and/or other mineral phases with concentrated oxalic acid at ambient temperature and pressure to create calcium oxalate minerals and other oxalate phases. The method achieves a high level of conversion (>90%) in a matter of days, which is approximately 1000 times faster than standard methods. The method could be used as an industrial process in processing plants around the world in which waste materials are turned into carbon storage materials. Such storage materials could be recycled into new building materials.
Technology
The approach would require building reactor vessels that would react waste materials with oxalic acid. The produced material could then be reprocessed into new building materials.
Opportunity
The group seeks to further investigate methods to make oxalic acid production from CO2 more economically feasible and pilot it’s technology at a petrochemical plant.
