Company:

Carbon8 Systems Ltd

Project:

CO2 Capture using Accelerated Carbonation

Year:

2008

Status:

Regional Winner & UK Winner

Carbon8 Systems Ltd takes the environmental mantra: "Reduce, reuse, recycle" and applies it on a grand scale. Paula Carey and her colleagues have developed Accelerated Carbonation, a process which can reduce the amount of waste that goes into landfill sites by recycling apparent rubbish into something re-useable. It can also be used to treat hazardous waste.

A number of industrial wastes naturally react with CO2 in the air but the reaction can take six months to two years. What Carbon8 does, as the name suggests, is use Accelerated Carbonation to fast-forward this process and produce carbonates or limestone. In just 15-20 minutes, it turns one man's rubbish into another man's building materials, which not only diverts waste from landfill sites but permanently captures CO2 in a very useful form. Carbon8 currently uses bottled waste CO2 to carry out the process but is developing technology to capture the CO2 emitted from landfill sites at source, which would create even greater carbon savings.

The market for Carbon8's process is a fruitful one. It currently costs around £200 to dispose of each tonne of hazardous waste. Accelerated Carbonation could reduce this cost by half, plus it creates a useful by-product to sell on. The process offers huge potential for local councils. Just one municipal waste incinerator processes 60,000 tonnes of hazardous waste per year, offering a potential annual saving of £6 million.