Quantifying the true carbon removal potential of enhanced rock weathering

量化增强岩石风化的真实碳去除潜力

• 批准号: NE/Y000471/1
• 负责人: Athanasios Paschalis
• 金额: $ 107.08万
• 依托单位: Imperial College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FY000471%2F1
• 关键词: Quantifying; true; carbon; removal; potential

To achieve the UN goal of less than 2 degrees of global warming, we need to not only reduce carbon emissions, but actively remove part of the carbon dioxide (CO2) we have added to the atmosphere. For this reason, the UK has committed to actively remove ~50 million tons of CO2 by 2050. While multiple solutions have been proposed to achieve this, only a handful can be applied at scales large enough to meaningfully contribute to climate mitigation. One of those solutions is the acceleration of silicate rock weathering (also called Enhanced Rock Weathering - ERW), which theoretically could globally remove ~10% of our annual carbon emissions. CO2 dissolves in water and then reacts with silicate rocks. The weathering products are then transported through streams and rivers to the ocean, where the carbon is locked away for thousands of years. This reaction actively removes carbon from the atmosphere, and at the same time it releases minerals that can benefit plants. In nature the process is very slow but can be sped up by simply crushing those rocks into a fine dust, which could be distributed by existing farming equipment at global scales. Despite the promise of ERW for climate mitigation, there are very few large-scale experiments which have demonstrated its efficacy, and non-target effects of rock dust on soils and fresh waters are not well known. In fact, all the weathering products, as they are transported via water in the soils and in the rivers, can interact with the soil itself, with plants, and with microorganisms living in soils and river water. This interaction may reduce the efficiency of ERW by orders of magnitude, casting doubt on its implementation as a global negative emission technology. Moreover, organisms at the basis of land and water food webs - plants and microbes - may be impacted by the side effects of ERW application. However, we lack the necessary interdisciplinary knowledge from soil and aquatic biogeochemistry, ecology and hydrology to fully understand and predict the efficiency of ERW. In this project we assemble a team of experts from all the aforementioned scientific disciplines to provide a complete understanding of the process of ERW, from the application of silicate rock dust until the weathering products reach the oceans. To achieve that, we will combine interdisciplinary experimental techniques, state of the art research infrastructure, and computational modelling. First, we will provide new fundamental knowledge on how the rock weathering process and the different weathering products affect and are affected by plants and soil microbes. An experiment that will disentangle the impacts of soils, plants and microbes will be conducted at Imperial College London. Then, we will provide fundamental knowledge on how the weathering products interact with river waters and the microorganisms living in them. To do that an experiment that disentangles the effects of river water chemistry, river flow dynamics, and aquatic microorganisms will be conducted at state-of-the art research facilities at the University of Birmingham. We will then generalize the new knowledge from the laboratory to the real world, by performing a full-scale field trial of ERW and monitoring all aspects of its efficiency in a Welsh forest. Finally, we will integrate all the new knowledge into an advanced ecohydrological model that can be used to predict the carbon removal efficiency at the catchment scale. The final deliverable of the project will be an assessment of ERW's potential to remove CO2 in the UK, and whether it can significantly contribute towards the country's climate goals, and tools that can be used by stakeholders to credibly assess the carbon removal efficiency of ERW. This will be an essential resource for state decision makers, in charge of meeting a county's negative emission goals, and the carbon industry.

为了实现少于2度的全球变暖的联合国目标，我们不仅需要减少碳排放量，而且还需要积极去除一部分二氧化碳（CO2）。因此，到2050年，英国已承诺积极去除约5000万吨二氧化碳。尽管已提出多种解决方案来实现这一目标，但只能以足够大的规模应用少数，以有意义地促进气候缓解。这些解决方案之一是硅酸盐岩石风化的加速度（也称为增强的岩石风化-ERW），从理论上讲，它可以在全球范围内清除〜10％的年度碳排放。二氧化碳溶解在水中，然后与硅酸盐岩石反应。然后将风化产品通过溪流和河流运输到海洋，碳被锁定了数千年。该反应积极地从大气中去除碳，同时释放可以使植物受益的矿物质。在本质上，这个过程非常慢，但是可以通过简单地将这些岩石粉碎成细尘而加快，这可以通过全球尺度上的现有农业设备分配。尽管ERW有望缓解气候，但很少有大规模的实验证明其功效，而岩石粉尘对土壤和新鲜水域的非目标影响并不众所周知。实际上，所有风化产品都是通过水在土壤和河流中运输的，都可以与土壤本身，植物以及微生物在土壤和河水中的微生物相互作用。这种相互作用可能会通过数量级来降低ERW的效率，从而对其作为全球负排放技术的实施产生怀疑。此外，在土地和水食物网（植物和微生物）的基础上，生物可能会受到ERW应用的副作用的影响。但是，我们缺乏来自土壤和水生生物地球化学，生态学和水文学的必要跨学科知识，无法充分理解和预测ERW的效率。在这个项目中，我们组装了来自上述所有科学学科的专家团队，以完全了解ERW的过程，从应用硅酸盐岩石到风化产品到达海洋。为了实现这一目标，我们将结合跨学科的实验技术，最新研究基础架构和计算建模。首先，我们将提供有关岩石风化过程和不同风化产品如何影响植物和土壤微生物的新基本知识。将在伦敦帝国学院进行一项将消除土壤，植物和微生物的影响的实验。然后，我们将提供有关风化产品如何与河水和生活在其中的微生物相互作用的基本知识。为此，将在伯明翰大学的最先进的研究设施上进行一项实验，该实验可以消除河水化学，河流动力学和水生微生物的影响。然后，我们将通过对ERW进行全面的现场试验并监视其在威尔士森林中的效率的各个方面，从而将新知识从实验室概括为现实世界。最后，我们将将所有新知识整合到一个先进的生态水文模型中，该模型可用于预测集水量表的碳去除效率。该项目的最终交付将是对ERW在英国删除CO2的潜力的评估，以及它是否可以为该国的气候目标做出重大贡献，以及利益相关者可以使用的工具可靠地评估ERW的碳去除效率。这将是国家决策者，负责实现县负面排放目标和碳行业的重要资源。