Green, Hannah, Larsen, Peter, Liu, Yang, and Nelson, Paul N. (2024) Removal of carbon dioxide via enhanced weathering of sugarcane mill ash under different soil conditions. In: Proceedings of the 45th Conference of the Australian Society of Sugar Cane Technologists. pp. 168-170. From: ASSCT 2024: 45th Annual Conference of the Australian Society of Sugar Cane Technologists, 16-19 April 2024, Townsville, QLD, Australia.

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Abstract

Climate change is likely to have large impacts on global sugarcane production due to sea level rise, increased incidence of crop diseases, and more common extreme weather events such as cyclones, flooding, drought, and heatwaves (Zhao and Li 2015). Rapid reductions in anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, as well as removal of CO2 already in the atmosphere, is required to limit the severity of climate change. One promising technology for capturing CO2 is human-induced enhanced weathering (EW). When silicates and oxides containing the base cations Ca2+, Mg2+, K+ and Na+ chemically break down or weather, CO2 is converted to bicarbonate, which flows to the ocean where it can be stored as bicarbonate or carbonate for thousands of years (Renforth and Henderson 2017). These reactions are known to buffer changes in climate over long geological timescales. EW aims to speed up these reactions to help mitigate climate change. This is theoretically achieved by placing materials that contain base-cation-rich silicates and/or oxides with small particle size (high surface area) in ideal weathering environments, for example, tropical soils under agriculture (Andrews and Taylor 2021; Baek et al. 2023; Edwards et al. 2017; Hartmann et al. 2013; Kantola et al. 2017). High soil biological activity and CO2 concentrations increase weathering rates. Soils in the humid tropics are generally acidic and have elevated temperature and moisture content, which further increase weathering rates. Additionally, application of base-cation-rich silicate materials has been shown to increase agricultural productivity (e.g., Berthelsen et al. 2001; d’Hotman de Villiers 1961; Kingston 1999; van Straaten 2006).

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