Quantifying and controlling the mechanisms responsible for mineral behaviour: Dissolution, adsorption and crystal growth

Projektinformationen

DRIAD

ID Finanzhilfevereinbarung: 101054584

DOI

10.3030/101054584

EK-Unterschriftsdatum 8 August 2022

Startdatum 1 September 2022

Enddatum 31 August 2027

Finanziert unter

• European Research Council (ERC)

Gesamtkosten

€ 3 499 625,00

EU-Beitrag

€ 3 499 625,00

Koordiniert durch

DANMARKS TEKNISKE UNIVERSITET
Denmark

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DRIAD (Quantifying and controlling the mechanisms responsible for mineral behaviour: Dissolution, adsorption and crystal growth)

Berichtszeitraum: 2022-09-01 bis 2025-02-28

Zusammenfassung vom Kontext und den Gesamtzielen des Projekts

The ability to describe how organic molecules control the behaviour of minerals, rocks and soils would give us the ability to predict the composition of water and gases in contact. This is a key for solving some of the serious Earth science challenges that society faces, including contaminant mobility, water quality, safe storage of waste, improved control on soil fertility, conversion of CO2 to solid, and from an industry perspective, design and production of safe, cheap functional materials. Getting such information has been difficult in the past, because molecular scale processes are often beyond the limits of what we can see, even with microscopes, but it is important because organic compounds can dramatically alter mineral behaviour.

My overall objective is to gain previously inaccessible insight into how silicate minerals dissolve and grow or transform to other minerals. We will use new, custom built instruments that can "see" at scales ranging from atoms to centimetres. Silicate minerals are the most abundant in nature and they are important in industrial products, ranging all the way from glass to particles in toothpaste. By learning from nature, we hope to develop a universal, conceptual framework for how organic molecules interact with silicate materials and from that, tailor reactions as we need. We focus on silicates because basalt (black volcanic rock, like Iceland, Azores, Hawaii) mineralises CO2, converting it to carbonate minerals (such as scale in the tea kettle, or limestone in the Alps). Manmade alkaline, silicate materials also react, such as waste building materials. The aim of this project is to understand the tricks nature uses to dissolve rocks and make other minerals, because the new knowledge will show us a pathway for converting CO2 gas into solid, where it will be mineralised, stable for geologic time.

Arbeit, die ab Beginn des Projekts bis zum Ende des durch den Bericht erfassten Berichtszeitraums geleistet wurde, und die wichtigsten bis dahin erzielten Ergebnisse

With this ERC project, we have equipped laboratories with custom built and modified instruments that can measure changes in the composition and behaviour of solid surfaces at atomic scale so we can watch while reactions take place and see the differences when we change the solution or gas in contact. With this new information, we can describe how the reactions are affected by organic molecules. Organic molecules are everywhere in nature. They are made by plants and animals to control the conditions for their life. Some organisms, such as mosses and lichens, produce organic compounds that dissolve rocks, to release the nutrients they need for growth. Other organisms produce organic compounds that promote formation of bones, teeth and spines. Our research team has been investigating the effects of simple organic compounds such as oxalate (found in rhubarb and spinach), acetate (vinegar) and others, on the dissolution and formation of minerals. We have also investigated the nanometre scale structure of glass using natural samples (basaltic glass, obsidian) and commercial glass (such as bottles and glass we make ourselves) to learn how it changes with time.

Our overall goal is to make a model that can describe how silicate materials behave during exposure to a range of conditions so we can use the model to predict how they will behave in other conditions and thus find new solutions to known problems. In particular for this project, we want to learn how to increase the rate of CO2 mineralisation. We want to make solids that are stable over millennia and useful as new materials in the construction industry. There is more work to do but we just finished the first part of this model, for the simplest of the silicate materials. It describes their behaviour very well.

Fortschritte, die über den aktuellen Stand der Technik hinausgehen und voraussichtliche potenzielle Auswirkungen (einschließlich der bis dato erzielten sozioökonomischen Auswirkungen und weiter gefassten gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen des Projekts)

Rocks weather when they are attacked by water, CO2 and organic compounds and either they dissolve or convert to other minerals. Common weathering products of rocks such as basalt and granite are clays, calcite and iron or aluminium oxides. Nature has used rock weathering to keep global CO2 levels in balance for eons, so that CO2 produced by volcanoes is consumed by formation of carbonate rocks, such as chalk, limestone and marble. Nature has kept CO2 safe and stable for geologic time. The problem for us, today, is that the rate of reaction is too slow to consume the gigatons of CO2 that society is pouring into the atmosphere and the oceans.

Some of our project results are very promising, in terms of increasing the rate of CO2 uptake. We have applied for a patent on the first of our results and we expect more to follow. We expect that this will form the base of a company that will make CO2 Traps, that can be installed in a factory chimney to reduce the volume of emissions. One new idea, that came out of this project, has recently been supported by an ERC-POC (proof of concept) grant.