Believed to have ‘transformative potential’, the In Process Tailings Carbonation (IPT Carbonation) technology has so far only been demonstrated on a lab scale, but the firm says it can be scaled-up with availability of concentrated sources of CO2.
Canada Nickel’s Crawford Project is hosted in ultramafic rock, which naturally absorbs and sequesters CO2. The potential to actively capture and sequester carbon was a key consideration in the company’s acquisition of the ultramafic rocks in the Timmins area.
That being said, the challenge for the firm has been to develop a process that speeds up the naturally occurring carbon asportation process.
Now, with the unveiling of its new work, Canada Nickel is boasting a simple active process that utilises tailings as generated in the milling process and injects a concentrated source of CO2 for a brief period of time.
Once captured, the CO2 could potentially be delivered by downstream processing of Crawford concentrates, a wide range of industrial processing activities, green hydrogen production, carbon capture facilities, or natural gas generation.
Further to the above, the process also demonstrates the potential to produce NetZero Nickel™ and NetZero Cobalt™ for the electric vehicle industry and generate substantial carbon credits in the process.
Mark Selby, Chair and CEO of Canada Nickel, said, “The lab scale test results demonstrate a potentially transformative process to turn a nickel mine into a net generator of carbon credits rather than a generator of carbon emissions.”
“Our active and accelerated process has the potential to operate at least 8-12 times faster than current passive approaches, delivering carbon capture at a multiple of what industry leaders are currently able to achieve. Our process also allows easier quantification and verification of the amount of carbon captured.”