Iceland-based startup Carbfix has developed a revolutionary technology that mixes CO2 with water and injects it into basalt rock for storage, thus, mitigating climate change.
Icelandic sustainable tech startup Carbfix has successfully developed and implemented a technology that accelerates natural processes of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide solidification.
This representative of the carbon removal sector owns a dome piped to a nearby plant. CO2 mixes with water drawn up from the ground and gets injected into the subsurface basalt rock. CO2 is captured either by being immediately dissolved in water from power plant exhaust or directly from the atmosphere by air capture. In the latter case, its dissolution in water comes right after capture.
As its first experiments showed, Carbfix technology enables carbon dioxide to turn into stone underground in less than two years. This natural and permanent storage solution is currently presented at an Action Summit at the Museum of the Future in Dubai, where COP28, the annual United Nations (UN) climate meeting, is being held this year, highlighting the need for a just energy transition and fossil fuel phase-out.
Carbfix’s mineralization method has been fine-tuned over the last decade. It is increasingly used for large commercial sustainability-focused projects. For example, Carbfix partnered with Climeworks to build the Mammoth direct air capture and storage (DAC+S) plant with a nominal CO₂ capture capacity of up to 36’000 tons per year when fully operational.
For this project, Carbfix will provide the permanent underground storage of carbon dioxide (CO2). Meanwhile, the Hellisheiði electricity power plant operated by ON Power will supply Climeworks’ Mammoth plant and the Carbfix CO₂ injection sites with renewable energy to run the entire direct air capture and storage process.
Amid ongoing research in Iceland, the startup is also implementing its proprietary carbon dioxide mineralization approach at other sites across Europe.
