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A New Factory Takes Carbon Dioxide From the Air and Turns It Into Stone
In Iceland, the world’s largest factory that takes carbon dioxide from the air and turns it into stone has started up. The plant can extract 4,000 tonnes of CO₂ a year from the air. That is roughly equivalent to the emissions of 2,000 modern cars.
The plant is located near the Icelandic capital Reykjavik and uses the generated heat from the nearby thermal power plant Hellisheidi. Climeworks, the Swiss startup behind the plant, christened the factory “Orca”, after the Icelandic word for energy, “Orca”.
Orca filters CO₂ from the air, mixes it with water and then injects that water deep underground. Thanks to a natural mineralisation process and the reaction with the basaltic rock typical for Iceland, the CO₂ is gradually transformed into stone. In nature, this process can take thousands of years, but Orca only takes two years.
The main difference with existing plants is that Orca extracts carbon dioxide from ordinary air. We already extract CO₂ from industrial gases, but at much higher concentrations, so it is much easier.
You can also use this technique anywhere in the world. Although the environmental conditions have to be right. In Iceland, for example…
