De Beers Testing Carbon-Neutral Mining

RAPAPORT... De Beers is studying how to eliminate the carbon footprintof diamond mining by storing the emissions inside kimberlite, it saidWednesday. The miner recently received a government grant of CAD675,000 ($514,000) to test the process at its Gahcho Ku?(C) mine in Canada, havingcarried out successful laboratory experiments. The project involves injecting carbondioxide into processed kimberlite rock to accelerate "mineral carbonation,"in which the greenhouse gas reacts with metal oxides to form a stable andbenign substance. The storage capability of kimberlites is so large that itwould require only 10% of the rock's storage potential to capture thecarbon-dioxide emissions of a whole mine, De Beers explained. "There is greatpotential to achieve carbon-neutral mining operations at sites where this typeof rock is present," said De Beers CEO Bruce Cleaver. The cash award from Natural Resources Canada's Clean GrowthProgram will enable De Beers to study whether the process can work inlarge-scale field demonstrations at Gahcho Ku?(C), which De Beers co-owns withMountain Province. De Beers also plans to perform tests at its Botswana operationsto assess differences between various climates and geological settings. TheUniversity of British Columbia (UBC), Trent University, the University ofAlberta, and the Quebec-based National Institute of Scientific Research areworking with the company on the project. "We've demonstrated rapid carbon fixation within days toweeks in the lab, but the challenge is to reproduce this success at largevolumes," said Greg Dipple, project lead and professor at Bradshaw ResearchInitiative for Minerals and Mining (BRIMM) at UBC. "[The grant] will help us accelerate this innovative workthat could fundamentally change the carbon footprint of not only the diamondindustry, but the mining sector more broadly," Cleaver added. Image: The Gahcho Ku?(C) mine. (Mountain Province)