HyperWeathering™ Carbon Dioxide Removal through Enhanced Rock Weathering While Phytomining

HyperWeathering™ Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) occurs though the enhanced rock weathering (ERW) of olivine on our hyperaccumulator farms, while we carry out phytomining. For every 300 tonnes of olivine fully weathered, approximately 1 tonne of nickel is liberated from the mineral as it dissolves.

This release of nickel into soils during ERW has previously prevented the usage of olivine at relevant application rates. Metalplant operates on naturally nickel-bearing serpentine soils and then plants nickel hyperaccumulator plants to both recover existing and released nickel as the plants grow and the rocks weather.

Any carbon-removal not allocated to our NegativeNickel product will be made available directly, with a greater than 70% efficiency in combined ERW+Phytomining, each 1 tonne of nickel supplied by olivine equates to the removal of 200 net tonnes of carbon dioxide removal.

HyperWeathering™ is currently only publicly available through the NegativeNickel™ product, though we are taking direct inquiries for large CDR off take ad future purchases directly.

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HyperWeathering is a part of our patent-pending process combining Nickel Hyperaccumulating Plants with Enhanced Rock Weathering

The HyperWeathering process has numerous CDR specific advantages. These include better techno-economics due to the high-value nickel co-product. Further, by being able to use high rates of olivine, one of the highest CDR potential per tonne of rock, on crops tolerant to high pH and nickel, we have a higher CDR potential per unit of land as compared to any other ERW technique.

Magnesium silicate rocks are quarried, then crushed using hydroelectric power.

Crushed rock is laid on fields sown with hyperaccumulator plants.

Water, CO₂, & rock interact to cause weathering, releasing magnesium ions and trace amounts of nickel.

As the plants grow, they draw nickel up into their biomass.

Plants are harvested then processed for nickel.

The CO₂ becomes bound in bicarbonate, which along with magnesium, runs off to the ocean for long-term storage as alkalinity.

How Enhanced Rock Weathering Works

Enhanced rock weathering involves the acquisition, crushing and placement of silicate minerals like olivine into farm fields to produce alkalinity that leads to the removal of carbon dioxide as bicarbonate.

Magnesium is safe and beneficial to be dissolved in water and magnesium cations (Mg++) are the same ones in expensive “mineral” water that is advertised as alkaline or high pH. Instead of pouring alkaline water pumped from a mineral spring into the ocean, you can think of ERW as making that alkaline mineral water in a field. Rivers then transport it to the ocean where it de-acidifies the water, while removing carbon dioxide.

Olivine is Optimal For ERW: Highly-efficient, fast weathering & lowest cost.

Olivine is an optimal mineral for ERW because it is fast weathering and highly-efficient, removing around ~1 tonne gross CDR per tonne of our 80% pure olivine rock.

This is 3-5X more CDR than other minerals, and means 3-5X less mining, grinding, transport, and spreading:

A study from US National Laboratory LLBNL carried out a Life cycle Assessment (LCA) and cost analysis on ERW and found that due to the much higher CO2 potential of olivine, it was the only mineral it examined that could remove carbon dioxide at less than $100 per tonne with ERW. (Breunig 2024)

Trace Nickel in Olivine Has Been a Problem

However, olivine has not traditionally been used (or is used at very low rates) due to it containing “trace” levels of nickel ~1/3 of 1% nickel (0.333%).

Introduced into food crop farmland like traditional ERW, nickel can enter the food system through small uptake, and with no plan to recover it, overtime, any nickel remaining in the field can persist as contamination.

Metalplant was founded to solve the nickel problem of enhanced rock weathering.

Turning the Problem of Nickel in ERW into a Solution

While many plants can’t handle high-levels of nickel and alkalinity in the field, special plants called hyperaccumulators have adapted to thrive in this environment.

Instead of being harmed by nickel, hyperaccumulators have evolved to take nickel up into their tissues and accumulate it at levels of greater than 0.1% nickel.

A very rare sub-class of hyperaccumulators can attain greater than 1% nickel by dry weight are known as hypernickelophores.

Metalplant’s species is a fast-growing, high-biomass species that can achieve over 2% nickel content by dry weight. Pictured here growing in our quarry on 100% olivine.

Metalplant's First HyperWeathering Trial

Metalplant continues to optimize and perfect our HyperWeathering work, but our seminal trial was carried out on a 32-plot trial, utilizing 8 treatments including a control, randomized within 4 blocks.

Metalplant is committed to utilizing only soil already naturally containing nickel. The soil type is known as serpentine, and is derived from the breakdown of the hydrated form of olivine, serpentinite.

This is also the native habitat of our hyperaccumulator species, some of which were seen growing on the field before our work even started.

Quantification of Carbon Dioxide Removal

Metalplant has thoroughly tested and profiled our soils and surrounding areas pre- and post-application to understand the biogeochemical processes occurring in the Near-Field Zone and Far-Field Zones.

A broad base of data is utilized to understand the components of the weathering flux, feedstock dissolution, cation sorption inputs to the CDR quantification. This includes monitoring for risks such as secondary carbonate or silicate formation and the biomass uptake of cations.