Canada Nickel Suggests Its Flagship Mine Could Produce 710,000 Tonnes Of CO2 Carbon Credits Annually
Canada Nickel (TSXV: CNC) believes it has found a way to produce carbon-free nickel, cobalt and iron at its flagship Crawford project in Timmins, Ontario. Referred to as In Process Tailings Carbonation, or IPT Carbonation for short, the tech is said to be a “new method of accelerated carbon capture.”
The company is claiming that the lab-based results thus far suggest that the process is potentially capable of absorbing enough carbon dioxide that it will allow for net zero carbon emissions within 36 hours following nickel production, and after six days lead to 21 tonnes of CO2 carbon credits per tonne of nickel produced. Passive approaches are said to presently take up to several months.
Extrapolated, the tech is said to potentially provide the company with 18 million tonnes of CO2 credits over the life of mine outlined in the firms PEA, which equates to 710,000 tonnes of CO2 worth of carbon credits per year.
They key to the tech is that the underlying geology of Crawford, which consists of ultramafic rock, is a natural carbon sequester. The IPT Carbonation process works by conditioning tailings from the processing circuit with CO2 for a period of time, which in layman terms means carbon dioxide is injected into the tailings as part of the processing circuit, instead of after the tailings have been deposited.
The process effectively requires a source of concentrated carbon dioxide, which could be provided via downstream processing activities, carbon capture facilities, green hydrogen production, or natural gas power production. Based on lab results, the process is believed to work 8 to 12 times faster than a passive approach.
“These lab scale test results demonstrate a potentially transformative process to turn a nickel mine into a net generator of carbon credits rather than a generator of carbon emissions,” said CEO Mark Selby, “Our process also allows easier quantification and verification of the amount of carbon captured.”
The company is so certain that its tech will work that it has gone through the process of trademarking the terms “NetZero Nickel”, “NetZero Cobalt”, and “NetZero Iron”. The company also claims that the ability of the region to sequester carbon was a “key consideration” of the company acquiring 42 square kilometres of land in the Timmins, Ontario region, which will be used for a potential “zero-carbon industrial cluster.”
Optimization of the process is reportedly ongoing.
Canada Nickel Company last traded at $1.56 on the TSX Venture.
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