New Hope for Climate Change: Scientists Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Stone

Scientists have found a way to reduce greenhouse emissions that contribute to climate change by turning them into stone.

The study published in the journal Science says that the researchers have managed to turn the carbon dioxide from a power plant to rocks. The pioneering study was conducted under a European-U.S. program called Carb Fix in partnership with Reykjavic Energy.

The research team held the experiment at Reyjavik Energy's Hellisheidi geothermal power plant in 2012, where they injected 175 tons of pure carbon dioxide and then 73 tons of a carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide mixture.

According to BBC, the scientists tried to return the carbon back in solid form by combining carbon dioxide waste with low pH water to create a slightly acidic mixture that will be sent to volcanic basalt. The water will react with the carbon dioxide, creating calcium and magnesium carbonates.

Researchers tested this theory by core drilling the test area, where they got rock samples with hints of white carbonates.

Martin Stute, the study's co-author from Columbia University in New York, said via Fredsrickburg, "We were surprised. We didn’t expect this. We thought this would be a project that would go on for decades. Maybe 20 years from now, we’d have an answer to the question. But that it happened so fast, and in such a brief period of time, that just blew us away.”

Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide emissions pose a threat to the environment as they tend to trap heat in the atmosphere. This behavior results to increasing global temperature that may be the cause of drastic changes in nature.

"In the future, we could think of using this for power plants in places where there's a lot of basalt - and there are many such places," Stute explained.