NegativeNickel™ – Carbon-Negative Nickel

NegativeNickel™ is a combination of hyperaccumulated HyperNickel™ salt or ingot, along with a specified amount of carbon dioxide removal.

This sample is in a ratio of N1:CDR200, where for every 1 unit of nickel produced, 200 net units of carbon dioxide are net removed in the production of this product.

This is a 0.250 gram quantity of nickel salt or nickel ingot, of which 50 grams of carbon dioxide removal will be attributed, giving the nickel a carbon-negative footprint that can offset (or inset) the embodied emissions of the products it goes into. Welcome to the start of a carbon-negative world.

$45.00

Nickel Type

Clear

NegativeNickel is carbon-negative nickel that is derived from our patent-pending process combining Nickel Hyperaccumulating Plants with Enhanced Rock Weathering

NegativeNickel combines the nickel yielded from plant biomass through phytomining (HyperNickel) and gets assigned the carbon dioxide removal produced while minerals weather in the same nickel-bearing soils (HyperWeathering).

This makes NegativeNickel, the lowest-carbon footprint nickel in the world, with a footprint of up to 200 tonnes carbon negative. The carbon negativity can be applied to negate the carbon footprint produced by the final product the nickel is utilized in, known as insetting.

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.

The weathering component, HyperWeathering, has numerous CDR specific advantages. These include better techno-economics due to the high-value nickel co-product. 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.

What are Nickel Hyperaccumulator Plants?

Nearly 40 years ago the the term “hyperaccumulator” was coined after discovering a tree with a 20-25% nickel latex sap on the island of New Caledonia.

Nickel hyperaccumulators are classified as plants that contain >0.1% nickel by dry weight in biomass.

While around 700-750 plants are known to hyperaccumulate nickel, only a select few can accumulator greater than 1% nickel by dry weight, including our plant that goes to 2% ni.

How the Phytomining Cycle Works

Phytomining is the use of naturally occurring nickel hyperaccumulator plants to draw nickel out of the soil and recover it. The process was originally developed to remediate natural nickel bearing soils or to clean up industrially contaminated soils near refiners and mines.

The process is fairly straight forward, planting the hyperaccumulator plants in the soil, optimizing their growth, then recovering their biomass ashing it, then recovering it with hydrometallugrical techniques.

Depletion of Nickel as a Limitation on Nickel Phytomining

Overtime each harvest removes more and more nickel until the soil is fully depleted of available nickel. From a remediation standpoint this is a desired outcome, but from the perspective of operating a sustainable mining business without moving locations or running out of sites this has been a problem preventing commercial scale phytomining.

Metalplant solves this phytomining problem, by solving the problem of Nickel in Olivine For Enhanced Rock Weathering

Olivine is an optimal mineral for ERW, but has not traditionally been able to be utilized used (or is used at very low rates) due to it containing “trace” levels of nickel ~1/3 of 1% nickel (0.333%).

Even non-hyperaccumulator plants can take up trace levels of nickel, which can be introduced into the food system, or with no no plan to recover it overtime, the nickel remaining in the field builds becomes considered contamination.

Solving the problem of both of these processes is why Metalplant developed our patent-pending method of producing carbon-negative metals through the combining phytomining and ERW, which we call HyperWeathering.

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)

Advantages of HyperWeaterthing

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.

While many plants can’t handle high-levels of nickel and/or alkalinity in the field, our hyperaccumulator plants called hyperaccumulators have adapted to thrive in ideal ERW conditions.

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.

HyperNickel Process From Field to Nickel

Metalplant is vertically integrated from mineral source to pure nickel production. We have vast reserves of olivine, which we directly quarry, crushed using renewable energy, and then mix into the field.

We then operate farms, optimizing plant growth and nickel uptake, then harvest the biomass. Soil and pore water samples are taken prior, during, and after the farming season to quantify carbon dioxide removal.

The ashed biomass, known as bio-ore is then metallurgically processed to pure nickel salts or metalloids. The geochemical measurements are modeled and field-verified, and reported as a credit.

For NegativeNickel, the emissions of the entire process are quantified and subtracted from the net carbon dioxide removal. Based on a conservative LCA of a greater than 70% net efficiency, the weathering of 300 tonnes of olivine produces 200 net tonnes of carbon dioxide, including nickel production. This means each 1 tonne of nickel, has 200 tonnes of net carbon dioxide associated with it, which can be sold altogether as NegativeNickel, or the products can be split into HyperNickel and HyperWeathering CDR.

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.

Far-Field Zone measurements such as the groundwater flow paths are observed both for cation export and for environmental risk monitoring.

Metalplant's 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.