Blue Planet economically captures carbon and criteria pollutants through a proprietary mineralization process and converts them into high-value aggregates for use in roadways and green buildings.
Blue Planet provides a unique solution to the global carbon capture problem. The world produces over 15 gigatons of carbon dioxide from stationary-source flue gas emitters every year. Air pollution from burning fossil fuels kills over 1 million people per year and is the primary cause of climate change. With Blue Planet’s patented solution every ton of carbon dioxide can be permanently captured to produce about 2 tons of calcium carbonate used in construction materials for roads and buildings. The world currently uses over 15 gigatons of concrete and mines over 20 gigatons of limestone per year.
The current method of carbon capture and storage is to inject waste CO2 underground, often into leaking depleted oil and gas reservoirs to enhance oil recovery. Blue Planet provides the only economically and environmentally sustainable solution to sequester carbon dioxide by converting it permanently into products with a large enough demand. As the Company’s patented systems remove 50-80% of the CO2 from traditional power plants, cement plants, refineries, or other manufacturing facilities, the CO2 is absorbed in solution to form bicarbonate which is used to precipitate carbonate minerals and permanently sequestered in green building materials that include cement, aggregate, concrete and solar reflective roofing and pavement coatings. Blue Planet has the potential to sequester carbon in the form of sand, gravel, reflective minerals, and cement, which are the key ingredients of concrete, roofing shingles, road beds, and many other products used globally at massive scales.
Blue Planet’s technology not only reduces CO2 emissions from power plants, but by repurposing the CO2 into building materials, it also reduces CO2 emissions from the manufacture of building materials. As this technology is widely adopted, atmospheric CO2 emissions will be significantly curtailed while profitably producing a range of high-demand building products.
Blue Planet produces lightweight coarse and fine aggregate, available for residential and commercial construction. Made from sequestered CO2 utilizing the biomineralization process, the use of Blue Planet aggregate is the most effective way to achieve carbon neutral and carbon negative concrete. Standard concrete, by comparison, has the highest CO2 footprint of all building materials.
Blue Planet bagged concrete is made of carbon sequestered coarse and fine aggregate. Until recently the only method for offsetting the carbon footprint of your building was achieved by planting trees. With Blue Planet sack concrete the highest CO2 footprint building material can now be carbon neutral or carbon negative.
When used in roofing tiles, Blue Planet’s roofing granules can reflect up to 96%, and up to 75% as shingles. Common asphalt roofing reflects only 10%. By reducing the absorption of solar heat, the use of energy for air-conditioning can be minimized during hot summer months.
When CO2 reacts with various transition metals, high solar-reflective cool pigments can be synthesized. These pigments used to color roofs and exterior walls will allow the building to absorb less heat from the sun, remaining cooler during hot summer months. An increase of solar reflectance by 30% using cool pigments can reduce energy costs by about 15%,
Titanim Oxide (TiO2) is the most widely used white pigment. Due to its growing demand, the price of TiO2 is constantly rising. Blue Planet CaCO3 powder, which is 100x less expensive than TiO2, also exhibits a higher solar reflectance than TiO2. Due to biomimetic synthesis pathway, our CaCO3 is non-toxic, so it can be used in the pigment, food, beverage and cosmetics industries as a TiO2 replacement or filler.
Because Blue Planet’s direct mineralization of CaCO3 mimics nature itself, purified CO2 is produced as a by-product at no extra cost. This is in contrast to state-of-the-art CCS technologies that require significant amounts of energy to produce pure CO2 as the only product. In Blue Planet’s technology, pure CO2 may be recycled in the process or sold to existing markets for enhanced oil recovery or geologic sequestration.
Blue Planet’s carbon capture and mineralization technology offers CO2 capture as an emissions control service to address existing and future CO2 cap-and-trade programs at state, federal and international levels.
Of the U.S. EPA’s six criteria pollutants, which include ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2) and lead, Blue Planet’s carbon capture and mineralization technology will remove SO2 and lead. Under some circumstances, particulate matter may also be removed at specific sites equipped with the mineralization technology.
Blue Planet uses three water inputs in its carbon capture and mineralization technology: (i) salty water, (ii) relatively less salty water and (iii) hard water. With pre-treatment, any combination of these waters may be obtained from the same input source, for example, produced waters at industrial sites. Once dissolved ions are consumed in the process, the treated water can be considered nearly potable.
Blue Planet is currently interviewing candidates for project demonstration. Potential sites include electricity generating stations powered by coal or natural gas, cement plants, petroleum and/or biofuel refineries.