Research Projects

The increased CO₂ concentration in earth’s atmosphere needs urgent attention to mitigate global warming. Natural mechanisms like ocean alkalinity enhancement, ocean fertilization, and enhanced rock weathering (ERW) are gaining attention for CO₂ removal and mitigating global warming. Enhanced rock weathering technology – spreading finely ground basalt powder on agricultural lands or soils – is particularly promising due to its scalability, affordability, and eco-friendliness. Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW) removes CO₂ from the atmosphere as basalt powder undergoes carbonation (reaction with CO₂ and water) to form bicarbonate ions, effectively sequestering carbon. CO₂ drawdown is calculated by measuring bicarbonate ions and using the stoichiometric ratio between CO₂ and bicarbonate. However, a simple device that can capture bicarbonate levels and serve as an ERW Monitor is currently unavailable. Therefore, an opportunity exists to measure time-integrated bicarbonate levels in soil samples, which would substantially improve the Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) protocols for determining atmospheric CO₂ drawdown rates with higher confidence. This project aims to design an ion-exchange resin-based device that can capture bicarbonate ions. The device will capture bicarbonate and other ions released from basalt weathering over a time duration, which would otherwise be flushed out of the soil profile. The device would be a game-changer, enabling accurate quantification of CO₂ removal rates from the atmosphere and significantly enhancing MRV protocols for the ERW industry. To attain our goal, we will be selecting a few affordable commercially available anion exchange resins, having potential for selective bicarbonate ion adsorption. The following factors will be tested to ensure the performance of the resin, that is, (1) influence of pH (pH = 6 – 8), (2) influence of other ions on selectivity, (3) adsorption equilibrium, (4) ion recovery from the resin. Once these tests are carried out, a small prototypes of resin packed column in a PVC or Teflon unit will be designed with microfiber membrane on both ends of the column to prevent microbial fouling of the resin. The device will be placed in a controlled environment to study its bicarbonate adsorption capability. This will provide an understanding of the resin’s performance while buried in the soil. Furthermore, we will aim to design a small site where we spread basalt and test our developed prototypes to mimic the practical scenario of agricultural fields. This project is aimed to develop and design ion-exchange resin-based adsorption device for bicarbonate capture and storage, to further quantify the carbon capture through ERW.