Potential of CO₂ sequestration through accelerated weathering of limestone on ships

Creators: Dong, Sijia^{1, 2}; Berelson, William M.³; Forin, Pierre²; Gutierrez, Melissa²; Carroll, Dustin^{4, 5}; Menemenlis, Dimitris⁵; Kyi, Albert Y.^{2, 6}; Adkins, Jess F.²

1. Nanjing University
2. California Institute of Technology
3. University of Southern California
4. San Jose State University
5. Jet Propulsion Lab
6. The University of Texas at Austin

Abstract

Calcium carbonate dissolution is the dominant negative feedback in the ocean for neutralizing the acidity from rising atmospheric carbon dioxide. Mimicking this natural process, the accelerated weathering of limestone (AWL) can store carbon as bicarbonate in the ocean for tens of thousands of years. Here, we evaluate the potential of AWL on ships as a carbon sequestration approach. We show a successful prediction of laboratory measurements using a model that includes the most recent calcite dissolution kinetics in seawater. When simulated along a Pacific shipping lane in the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean–Darwin ocean–general circulation model, surface alkalinity and dissolved inorganic carbon increase by <1.4% after 10 years of continuous operation, leaving a small pH and partial pressure of carbon dioxide impact to the ocean while reducing 50% carbon dioxide emission in maritime transportation.

Copyright and License

© 2025 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).

Acknowledgement

We thank N. Rollins, N. Dalleska, and J. Park for help in the laboratory experiments. We also thank H. Watson, M. Stern, F. Scovello, T. Dickenson, M. Huang, and A. Peterson for helpful discussions concerning the potential of realizing the AWL approach on ships. D.C. and D.M. carried out a portion of this research at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the NASA, with grants from Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry, Physical Oceanography, Modeling, Analysis, and Prediction, Interdisciplinary Studies, and Carbon Monitoring System programs. High-end computing resources were provided by the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division of the Ames Research Center. We lost our friend and colleague, S.D., as this manuscript was going to be published, we dedicate this paper to her and may her spirit inspire others as it has us.

Funding

This work was supported by National Key R&D Program of China (2023YFF0805004) to S.D.; Grantham Foundation (#12540314) to J.F.A.; the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities–Cemac “GeoX” Interdisciplinary Program (2024QNXZ06) to S.D.; Natural Science Foundation of China (42403079) to S.D.; and Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20241219) to S.D. USC provided support to W.M.B.

Contributions

Conceptualization: S.D., J.F.A., W.M.B., D.C., and P.F. Methodology: S.D., J.F.A., W.M.B., D.C., A.Y.K., and P.F. Investigation: S.D., W.M.B., P.F., M.G., D.C., D.M., and A.Y.K. Visualization: S.D., D.C., and P.F. Resources: J.F.A., S.D., W.M.B., D.C., and M.G. Funding acquisition: J.F.A., S.D., W.M.B., and D.M. Data curation: S.D., W.M.B., D.C., and M.G. Validation: S.D., J.F.A., and W.M.B. Supervision: J.F.A., S.D., W.M.B., and D.C. Formal analysis: S.D., J.F.A., W.M.B., and D.C. Software: S.D., J.F.A., D.C., and D.M. Project administration: S.D., J.F.A., W.M.B., and P.F. Writing—original draft: S.D. and P.F. Writing—review and editing: S.D., W.M.B., J.F.A., D.C., D.M., and P.F.

Conflict of Interest

J.F.A. is the cofounder and chief executive officer of Calcarea Inc. W.M.B. is also cofounder of Calcerea Inc. J.F.A. and W.M.B. are inventors on patent application (#11,235,278 B2) held by Caltech and USC that covers systems and methods for CO₂ sequestration in marine vessels. The authors declare that they have no other competing interests.

Supplemental Material

Figs. S1 to S7; Table S1 (PDF)

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