Carbon is stored in mining waste permanently.

Blue Skies Minerals is developing the Carbonated Tailings Process. In this process, a carbonated solution produced by a Direct Air Capture system is blended with ground mining wastes (mine tailings) along with additives, and this mixture is disposed together with waste rock in bottom-up dumps. Carbon is converted to carbonate minerals and is permanently retained.

Our process eliminates metal leaching from mining wastes, providing a tangible environmental benefit.

Contaminated Mine Drainage

Discovery of the Carbonated Tailings Process

Treatment of contaminated mine waters, particularly the vexing problem of treatment in perpetuity, is a significant issue for the mining industry that was ignored ... until Teck Coal had to confront it at its coal mines. They committed $850 million to water treatment, highlighting the enormous price tag this problem carries. This triggered the search for new, less expensive solutions, like the development of bottom-up waste rock dumps. However, these solutions rely on gas flux modelling and other processes that are only understood by technical specialists.

When Dr. André Sobolewski decided to devote himself to climate tech, he realized that it is possible to blend carbonated solutions from DACs with mine tailings, and then cementify the mixture in bottom-up dumps. The final material is stable geotechnically and geochemically. This solution is elegant in its simplicity because it addresses at once the problem of carbon sequestration and metal leaching.

The carbonated tailings process relies on natural processes readily observed at mine sites. The process uses ordinary reagents, but their unique combination through the CTP resolves both the problem of carbon storage and contaminant leaching. Its discovery is the result of a lifetime of effort by Dr. Sobolewski. Potentially it will change mining forever.