Just outside Beye Berte, a small town on Newfoundland’s rocky north coast, there’s a bad dream of 50 tons of toxic liability left.
In the mid-20th century, local prospectors discovered asbestos on the hills above the bay. Advocate Mine opened in 1963 and became one of Canada’s largest asbestos producers, providing mineral fibers for insulation and fire-resistant materials. However, health risks for asbestos, including mesothelioma and other lung diseases, became apparent, and global demand for minerals fell, and the mine was closed in 1995. “There’s a stigma in the town right now,” says Trina Barrett, who grew up in the Beye Belt. As a child, her father worked in the mines. When the mines were closed, those jobs disappeared.
However, the mine’s waste and tails are stuck. Mounded on a half-mile-long mountain, the tailings are considered too large to be so dangerous to deal with. Rain and wind disperse tailings in air and water over time, scientists say. Sometimes kids ride dirt bikes or ATVs on the mounds and kick dust that can blow miles. Now, Barrett wants to not only clean up waste, but also use it as a way to tackle climate change.
Barrett is the co-founder of Bay Amineral, one of many new companies around the world, and aims to extract important minerals from mining waste and use what remains to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. “This is an environmental malfunction in my hometown,” Barrett says. “[We] My community wears this and I want to actually help you get it right and solve the problem. ”
The report found that asbestos tearing in Canada and the US can remove up to 750 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Many mined materials, including nickel, platinum, diamonds and asbestos, are found in so-called super-marine beetle rocks. This rock is rich in magnesium, an alkaline metal. After mining companies extract the target material, they bulldoo the magnesium-rich leftovers in the bulldoo, turning into a giant tailing pile that reacts with the atmosphere of atmospheric dioxide to form magnesium carbonate. This “new” rock can permanently sequester that carbon – whether on earth or potentially in concrete-like applications.
This process, commonly known as “carbon mineralization,” occurs naturally, but occurs on much longer time scales. This can be hundreds or thousands of years. But as planets warm up and scientists call to not only cut fossil fuel use, but also remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, more and more companies are investigating ways to speed up carbon mineralization by breaking down alkaline rocks with heat or chemicals, creating more surface areas, or moving air through a large number of tails.
As this process is known, the business case of carbon mineralization is based on the sale of carbon removal credits and the sale of tail by-products such as silica and nickel for use in construction and electrification. “If we have enough funds, we’re trying to make these projects come true. [from either of these revenue streams,]”Abby Lunstram, a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Clean Energy Conversion Institute, says researchers are using asbestos tails and other sources to investigate carbon removal.
Rock-based asbestos fiber.
Pvince73 via ShutterStock
2022 Report According to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, it estimated that existing asbestos tails in Canada and the United States could remove a total of up to 750 million tonnes of CO2, as well as environmental health hazards.
“It’s a potentially beneficial situation for both parties on many different levels,” says Lunstrum.
Asbestos is the name of a group of minerals that are extremely strong in fiber structure, lightweight and deadly. When asbestos fibers enter the human body through inhalation, they cause cancer of the lungs, ovaries, gastrointestinal tract, and other diseases that occur decades after exposure. The United Nations has I said There is no safety threshold for exposure, and the risk is particularly severe for previous miners. One 2019 study We discovered a proportion of asbestos-related diseases, up to 360 times the average population of Italian asbestos miners. 2013 registry Of the former Baie Verte Miners, 109 of the 1,003 subscribers, were found to have asbestos-related diseases.
Living near the tail also brings an arithmetic. Research into communities near asbestos mines in Quebec towns, Found The nearby town was “severely contaminated” by asbestos dust from the tail mountain, and had asbestos fibers. pollution It can damage nearby water bodies, aquatic lifespans and reduce biodiversity.
The startup is developing a technology to heat the tail to F to 1,000 degrees, breaking the mineral structure and speeding up carbon removal.
2006 study Commissioned by Newfoundland, it was discovered that Beye Berte’s mining site was “heavy loaded” with asbestos in the air. 2011 Report Asbestos “permissible capacity” was found in samples taken intermittently outside the Baie Verte Town Hall. Residents say the complete effects of asbestos in the air remain unknown. They were calling for an expanded miner’s registry to include residents.
Carbon mineralization has helped regulate the planet for millions of years, and there are enough alkaline materials on the planet to stabilize our changing climate. However, most alkaline rocks are not exposed to the atmosphere – the international panel on climate change Estimated To maintain global warming up to 2 degrees Celsius, by 2100, up to 20 billion tons of carbon dioxide must be smoked from the atmosphere each year.
By itself, the asbestos tail, made up of gravel rock mounds, already absorbs a large amount of CO2. 2022 study The event took place at the King City Asbestos Mine in San Benito County, California, and found that the tailing mountain absorbs up to 179 tons of CO2 per year. However, treatments can promote absorption and greatly increase the possibility of carbon removal.
Beye Berte of Newfoundland.
Devon Brian
The first pilot project using tailings of all kinds is underway at the Western Australian operating nickel mine. The project is run by Arca, a startup that was spun from a research conducted at the University of British Columbia. To speed up the reaction rate with CO2, Arca uses a remote controlled robot “rover” that looks like a go-kart perched on a corksui, creating a tail, bringing non-mineralized rock to the surface. According to an analysis of tailing mineralogy at the company’s websites around the world, approximately 50 tons of ultra-substantial tails absorb a large amount of CO2, and this stirring approach allows tailings to capture CO2 10-25 times faster.
Arca has also developed a technology that uses microwaves to heat the tail to F above F over 1,000 degrees, breaking down the rock’s mineral structure and releasing magnesium. Magnesium can then be brought to storage sites, where it is mineralized by baking. The process not only accelerates carbon dioxide removal by making the tail more reactive, but also potentially destroys carcinogenic fibers when applied to asbestos tails, but the company says it still needs to test this. Arca is currently exploring a partnership with Baie Minerals, and is testing samples from the Baie Verte site to determine whether tailings are the technology-friendly type.
Critics worry that using asbestos tails for carbon removal could exacerbate health risks if the material is crushed.
Mike Sullivan, co-founder of Baie Minerals, says the company’s main purpose is to extract important minerals such as magnesium and silica from the tail for use in cement, fertilizer and other industrial purposes. This involves using an acid solution to leach the minerals out of the tailings so that they do not air. Ultimately, the company will begin using tails for carbon removal and potentially use microwave methods.
Montreal-based Exterra Carbon Solutions’ Val-Des-Sources, Quebec, opened a pilot facility in March 2024 to treat asbestos tails from local mines. What remains is the high purity of magnesium oxide, absorbing 1.1 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of material, forming magnesium carbonate. According to CEO and co-founder Olivier Dufresne, the process allows for the absorption of CO2 “within a few hours.”
Dufresne said the pilot facility can now process around 200 pounds of tailings per hour and produce around 300 tons of magnesium oxide per year. The company says it aims to build a full-scale facility in 2027.
Carbon removal startup Arca uses remotely controlled “rovers” at a nickel mine in Western Australia to burn tailings.
Arca
Ian Power, an assistant professor of environmental and geoscience at Trent University in Ontario, says that treating asbestos tails in chemicals or microwave reactors has the advantage of breaking down fibers, but it’s expensive. Whether such a project is economically viable depends on the price of carbon credits. “If you have a price of $200 a ton, it opens the door to do certain things,” he says. “If it’s low, that might make no sense.” Power says pilot-level projects still have a way to go before they reach commercial applications.
Still, critics are concerned that using asbestos tails for carbon removal can exacerbate human health risks if the material is crushed and increased surface area. I explored For other types of reactive rocks. “The last thing we want is to crush these tails and distribute the killer’s asbestos fiber into the air,” says Daniel Green. “It’s dangerous for workers. It’s dangerous for the communities in which these plants are built.”
Paul DeMers, director of Toronto’s Center for Occupational Cancer Research, says disrupting tails can send them into the air, increasing the health risks of workers, especially for workers, but leaving the tailing is not a safe option either. “I think there’s plenty of evidence to worry about people who live near sites where cancer is at increased risk,” he says. “There’s really no simple answer to this.”
Baie Minerals plans to establish a demonstration project at the community college in Baie Verte this year.
Amanda Humvee, chief administrative officer of the town of Bay Berte, says the town’s priority is the safety of its residents. Advanced tailing projects need to be monitored from both the town and the state, she says. However, she is “cautiously optimistic” that the Baie Minerals project can provide solutions to the community.
Canada’s natural resources see carbon mineralization as a sector with long-term growth and export potential. Agency spokesman Maria Radouchule said in an email that certain safety measures and regulations regarding the carbon mineralization of tailings depend on the type of mine waste used.
Mick Breen is not sure.
Breen grew up in Beye Berte. After he graduated from high school, he still had a place in town and regularly returned to visit his mother (his father, who worked in the mine, died in 2023). Breen is dissatisfied with the lack of state reclamation on the premises. “If you go there right now, all you lack is a big heavy hole truck. That looks the same as when it was up and running.” He is skeptical that Baie Minerals has the technology necessary to safely use asbestos.
To reassure residents that their mining sites can be safely improved, Baie Minerals plans to establish a demonstration project this year at Baie Verte’s Community College Campus. However, if there are health effects from using asbestos for carbon removal, DeMers says, it could take about 30 years for those effects to become clear.
