SF startup spreads crushed rock to speed carbon removal and capture greenhouse gas

"“We take rocks that naturally remove carbon over really, really long time periods, and we crush them up to create a powder and spread them on farmland to make them remove carbon in years instead of millennia,” Kanoff said."

"“That's naturally happening every single year. And so all Teradata is doing is speeding up that natural process by taking those same rocks, crush them up to speed up that reaction and ultimately get remove carbon instead of over 100,000 years to remove it,” Kanoff said."

"The technology relies on pulverized rock spread over farmland to speed up chemical reactions that naturally bind with carbon dioxide and carry it into soil and water systems."

"Over thousands of years, storms and moisture slowly dissolve certain types of rock, triggering chemical reactions that bind with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That carbon is eventually carried into the ocean."

A startup called Terradot uses enhanced rock weathering to accelerate carbon dioxide removal. Pulverized rock is spread over farmland to speed chemical reactions that naturally bind carbon dioxide and move it into soil and water systems. The approach builds on academic research at Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability. The method relies on rock types that remove carbon over very long time periods through dissolution driven by storms and moisture. By crushing the rock into a powder, the reactions occur faster, reducing the time needed for carbon removal from extremely long periods to years. The company was founded by a Stanford graduate and a Stanford researcher who studies processes involving compounds in soil.

Read at ABC7 San Francisco