A research group led by Zihua Shao (doctoral student at the time), Project Researcher Yunfeng Liang and Professor Takeshi Tsuji of the Graduate School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo, in collaboration with ENEOS Xplora Inc., has developed a new model to predict how rapidly olivine minerals can react with and permanently store CO2.
Although olivine is abundant and has substantial CO2 storage potential, its reaction rates vary widely with mineral composition. Conventional geochemical models have struggled to reproduce the rapid mineralization rate observed in experiments. Building on their previous discovery, the team incorporated a surface reaction pathway into the conventional geochemical model. The new model shows that increasing CO2 concentration can further promote this reaction and explains why calcium-rich olivine reacts much faster than magnesium-rich olivine. Crucially, it reproduces the approximately two-hour mineralization time observed experimentally under a CO2 atmosphere, whereas conventional models predicted thousands of hours.
These findings provide a new basis for identifying rocks and subsurface reservoirs suited to rapid CO2 mineralization. Integrating the model with reservoir-scale simulations and geophysical imaging could improve predictions of carbon storage performance and support future approaches that combine permanent CO2 storage with natural hydrogen production and critical mineral recovery.
Ex Situ and In Situ CO2 Mineralization Processes Using Olivine
Papers
Journal: Nature Communications
Title: Surface carbonation governs olivine reactivity for rapid CO2 mineralization
Authors: Zihua Shao, Yunfeng Liang*, Gyuhwan Jo, Keisuke Nakamura, Takeshi Tsuji*
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