Northern Ontario mining company identifies new method for capturing carbon

Canada Nickel has released the results of a laboratory test program for a new method of accelerated carbon capture that's showing promising results.

Carbon capture is a major element of fighting climate change, removing carbon created from industrial operations.

The new method is called in-process tailings (IPT) carbonation and the company plans to use it on the Crawford deposit between Timmins and Cochrane.

"These rocks have this characteristic that once they're exposed to air, they spontaneously absorb CO2," said Canada Nickel CEO Mark Selby.

"As we're processing the rocks to extract the nickel, we simply take the tailings as they come out of the process, inject some C02 into them and then let them sit. And within that 36 hours, we get to zero and within six days we get to 20 tonnes of CO2 for every ton of nickel we produce."

For Canada Nickel's Crawford project, that translates into 710,000 tonnes of CO2 credits per year and 18 million tonnes of CO2 credits over the life of the mine.

"Sometimes in life you get lucky where there is a bunch of things that intersect together and exactly that," Selby said.

"We need a huge amount of nickel for EV batteries -- every Ford Explorer or pickup truck is going to need 90 or 110 kilos of nickel sitting in every truck battery."

Places like Timmins, he said, have mines with the minerals they need in close proximity to where the market are located.

"People not only want nickel, but want zero carbon nickel," he said. "It's a great place to be."

Selby said the new process has the potential to operate at 8 to 12 times faster than current approaches. The new process, which until now has only been demonstrated in a lab with a limited number of samples, could be scaled up along with the availability of concentrated sources of carbon dioxide.

"Other approaches that people have tried have ended up taking months before you can get to a net-zero number -- we're at a point where we can get to that net-zero number within 36 hours," Selby said.

The announcement is getting praise from environmentalists, who have taken notice of the green shift happening with mining.

"It doesn't surprise me that we see a mining company advancing sustainability and carbon capture," said David St. Georges of Rethink Green.

"We have a lot of benefits from companies in northern Ontario -- be it our air purification thanks to Vale, the re-greening efforts from Vale (formerly Inco) -- so to hear this from a mining company that relies on the earth, the landscape and the infrastructure of the community, it's nice to hear that. It's exciting."

St. Georges said consumers want mining companies to have sustainability in mind as they choose to go down a greener path.

"The talk of EV vehicles is about getting these minerals out of the ground, but the mines have to do their part to truly make this sustainable," he said.

"These companies taking that initiative is showing stakeholders that they're serious, that they're taking that extra step. It shows the community intent."

"Consumers really now want a low-carbon source of nickel and we think this class of deposits is going to emerge as the big new source of supply for the next 100 years," said Selby.

Canada Nickel is still in the process of conducting feasibility studies on the Crawford deposit. They hope to start construction on the site in the next few years, with production to begin hopefully around 2027/2028.