Arca, a Canadian carbon-capture tech startup, announced that British Columbia’s Center for Innovation and Clean Energy (CICE) has awarded it a C$1.25 million ($920,000) grant in support of a pilot project for air-to-rock carbon mineralization using mine tailings in BHP’s Mt Keith Nickel West mine in Australia.
The 18-month project is intended to test and verify Arca’s methodology to capture and permanently store atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and demonstrate to the mining industry that Arca’s technologies can integrate safely and successfully at an operating mine site.
Arca, formerly known as Carbin Minerals, said its technology enables mines to permanently remove CO2 using rovers, surface manipulation technology and machine learning algorithms to significantly speed up the rate of carbon mineralization, measure critical carbon capture, and sell CO2 removal credits that are verifiable and permanent. This process, according to the company, is unique because atmospheric CO2 is captured and stored in a single step.
In June, Arca reported that it was working with global mining major Vale, and the Australia-based juniors Poseidon Nickel, Nickel Search, and Blackstone Minerals.
Arca said it was also working with Talon Metals which, in a joint venture with Rio Tinto, is developing the USA’s only high-grade nickel resource for the domestic battery supply chain. Todd M. Malan, head of climate strategy at Talon Metals, said, “Our partnership is focused on showing how ‘waste’ from conventional nickel processing can be harnessed
to store carbon that has been removed from the atmosphere or captured in industrial processes. This ‘waste-as-carbon-sink’ approach has further potential for reuse in building materials, thus significantly reducing the amount of waste that needs to be stored.”
