Shop
About Olivine

How CO2 removal works

greenSand’s olivine mission is focused on capturing and removing the CO2 pollution with Olivine mineral rock. Olivine is a common volcanic mineral that can be found in large quantities all over the world. The unique feature about greenSand olivine products is the ability to clean up CO2 as nature has done for billions of years within the results of negative emissions. In nature, this process takes place with minerals like Olivine that work as CO2 removal. The skills of greenSand products are to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by capturing that with the mineral Olivine. With one ton of greenSand Olivine, you can remove up to one ton of CO2!

Mountain with Olivine

Olivine-rich rock is the most abundant type of rock in the crust of the earth formed by volcanoes, like dunnites that occur in large masses in the majority of countries of the world. The stone olivine can be found at 1/3 of the earth’s crust. This is done by removing their lateritic overburden, mine the underlying dunnite (a rock that consists of>90% of olivine).

Mining and Transport

It is possible to crush Olivine into different sizes to enable its transportation and fitting with the different applications. The speed of weathering depends on the size of the greenSand Olivine. The smaller the material, the faster CO2 is removed from that area. greenSand’s Life Cycle Assessment has shown a very high efficiency of 92%.

Enhanced Weathering

Weathering is the only process that has captured huge volumes of CO2 during the whole history of the Earth. When the greenSand Olivine is weathered, CO2 is no longer released. Spreading up its weathering process is an innovative and effective way to remove and sequestrate CO2 from the atmosphere and slow down the acidification of our oceans.

Projects

greenSand olivine products are a perfect fit for the commercial sector, construction, agriculture and roads. RET decided to advocate the use of 16,000 tons of greenSand self-binding Olivine gravel along a 24-kilometer metro line between Rotterdam and Hoek van Holland. The equal weight of CO2 will be cleaned by greenSand products derived by the unique Olivine stone!

Life Cycle Assessment

Throughout the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which is a method to determine the total environmental impact of a product during its life cycle, it is possible to determine from the extraction of the raw material to production, transport, use, and waste processing the impact of Olivine products. 

Indeed, greenSand’s Life Cycle Assessment has shown a very high efficiency equal to 92% in the whole process. If you use greenSand Olivine products to replace, for instance, basalt, you can subtract that footprint!

Download here