A brief history of CarbFix: challenges and victories of the project's pilot phase

Abstract

The pilot phase of the CarbFix project ran for over a decade and consisted of the training of students, creating the scientific basis for the fixation of carbon dioxide in the subsurface through the in-situ carbonation of basalts, and the demonstration of this technology by fixing approximately 200 tons of injected CO2 as carbonate minerals during 2012 and 2013. Over the course of this effort numerous parts of this project have been reported in scientific articles, but a number of challenges including that of separating CO2 gas from a H2S-rich effluent gas, the clogging of the original CarbFix injection well and the damage to the project’s gas pipe by a third party that eventually shut down the project’s pilot phase, have yet to be detailed in the scientific literature. This brief manuscript reviews the CarbFix timeline over the past 12 years, describing in detail some of these challenges. CarbFix demonstrates how interdisciplinary collaboration between the green energy industry, academia, engineers and technicians allows for a fast and efficient development of the idea of battling climate change by permanently petrifying otherwise emitted CO2 in subsurface basalt formations into an economic industrial scale process useful to the global economy.