New Years Resolution Time: Systems - Synergy 4 Motivation, Innovation in Our Professional Disciplines: Materials-Minerals-Mining.

Materials Science, Technology and Engineering news feed is moving fast.

On the contrary slower moving realisation, seldom lives-up to expectations. Arguably this can result in a lowering of expectations with an accompanying lowering of standards?

Now is the time for making New Years Resolutions - Few will regret the end to 2008!

Someone who wished to remain anonymous, but granted me permission to publish, recently wrote in a personal and confidential document the following statements:

"NB. Currently Studying Opportunities for a new concept(s) for CO2 absorption with simultaneous production of Hydrogen, industrially oriented; Steelmaking, mining and metallurgical extraction =>energy production, distribution & control of industrial gas emissions:

From local (motivation) to global...

Systems /Synergy 4 Approach:
-click to enlarge the Venn Diag image opposite.

1. Focus: CCS-Carbon, Capture & Storage,
2.Mining (Coal)– Motivation, Coal reserves France(58)-Scotland, Ayrshire...
3.Coal Powered Electricity & Heat generation,
4.Metallurgy/Materials/Advanced Processes,

It is common knowledge that immediate action is required and plebiscited. The 2009 clean economy appears to be the time to start -get over this crises stuff and no hedging!

One of my resolutions will be to report on these fields and contribute as far as my professional skills permit.

I strongly believe a concurrent engineering approach is the best way forward, if the coal burning lobby is to avoid being named and shamed globally!

Having failed to post regularly on the many advances during 2008 I shall echo a couple of news items from our pro-association IOM3 (UK)



1. Peridotite

Peridotite carbonation can be accelerated via drilling, hydraulic fracture, input of purified CO2 at elevated pressure, and, in particular, increased temperature at depth. After an initial heating step, CO2 pumped at 25 or 30 °C can be heated by exothermic carbonation reactions that sustain high temperature and rapid reaction rates at depth with little expenditure of energy. In situ carbonation of peridotite could consume >1 billion tons of CO2 per year in Oman alone, affording a low-cost, safe, and permanent method to capture and store atmospheric CO2.

ref: In situ carbonation of peridotite for CO2 storage,PNAS By Peter B. Kelemen and Jürg Matter of the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964

NB. P.B.K. and J.M. have a preliminary patent filing for the technique of heating peridotite to achieve self-sustaining, rapid carbonation. Good luck with the realisations.

2. Coal of Africa.
A new coal mine in RSA-Republic of South Africa has started production. The company aims to Produce 5-6 MT/y, 70% for exportation.

System/Synergy 4 Approaches - Announced

This post will be based upon an up-to-date extract from a current specially CO2 - CCS focused curriculum vitae which reads as follows:

"Expert in the many aspects of manufacturing special metals & alloys from R&D to Market.

Special Interests: Innovation(s) - Eco-Engineering – Smart Materials

. Metallurgy, Special Alloys, Materials & Manufacturing Processes.

. Advanced Processes-Products-Markets.

. Science-Technology-Engineering (EBE -Environmentally Benign Eng. Approaches).

Durable Development -Intl. Support -Technical & Cultural–Bilingual, fluent french.

NB. Currently studying-reviewing Opportunities for new concept(s) for CO2 absorption with simultaneous production of Hydrogen, industrially oriented; Steelmaking, mining and metallurgical extraction =>energy production, distribution & control of industrial gas emissions:

-Systems /Synergy 4 Approaches
1. Mining (Coal)– Motivation Coal reserves France(58)-Scotland, Ayrshire.
2. Coal Powered Electricity & Heat generation – unavoidable for certain countries.

3. Metallurgy/Materials/Advanced Processes -my profession
4. FOCUS: CCS-Carbon, Capture & Stockage-UN-G8 recommendation: Socolow "Wedge-a-War" theme.

Other on going work: structuring approaches to interdisciplinary applied science challenges. Examples are given cf. PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE...(CV on request) .

I wish to focus for the moment on what I call the Systems/Synergy 4 Approaches outlined above, a Triumvirate with an Aim, a Focus. The focus chosen being CO2, no one who wishes to understand the issues involved in CCS can refuse to read the conference papers made available freely by the organisers Bureau Regional de Geologie et des Mines (BRGM) and The Insitute for Petroleum (IFP). From memory, all papers are in english. This post goes further & is especially concerned with the metallurgical and chemical aspects of CCS-Carbon, Capture & Stockage, listed above.

(If I left other aspects or unfinished phrases it is on purpose, to leave the wider system of materials science, technology and engineering open to questions, requests suggestions: no-holds-bard.)

In my first blog "Conversations" I made several entries under the label C02 absorption. These and all labelled subjects may be found via the Site Search, Top Left, not the more visible WWW Google Customised Search Tool. The reader is free to browse both of course. More to point of the current post, are my posts entitled: The Metallurgy of CO2 Absorption with Simultaneous Production of Hydrogen

There I set out to demystify the simple combination of common metals with humid CO2 (ie CO2 absorption by a metal) resulting in a metal carbonate with simultaneous production of Hydrogen.

The commonest natural process, known to all, is iron rust, Iron (Fe) in the presence of wet(H20) carbon dioxide (CO2) gives Iron Carbonate (FeCO3) giving off Hydrogen gas (H2).

Please read the full post: The Metallurgy of CO2 Absorption with Simultaneous Production of Hydrogen. To the best of my knowledge, this is a good review of the state of the art at the time (mid 2007) Naturally from a metallurgical science point of view or a metalurgical process and chemical engineering stance many finer point must addressed to obtain an economically viable process and value added products (mainly the much talked of H2 fuel vector & FeCO3) all contributions - colaborations welcomed to "Wedge-a-War"

To get involved it is best to arm ones-self with some sound statistics of main CO2 producers. For steel, CO2 goes hand-in-hand with steel production. These figures together with the CO2 correction factor are extensively given and well presented by country, region, "continents or uniform blockes", by company and company rank Top to bottom, tables and graphs notably by the International Iron & Steel Institute (IISI), based in London.