The BHP group would assess the potential for carbon capture and storage using waste from its nickel mining operations in Australia.

The company plans to use waste, which contains a high content of magnesium oxide, from its Nickel West operations in Western Australia (WA) for the proposed work.

This waste has the potential to extract carbon from the air to create magnesium carbonate, which is a stable compound in the form of a salt, Reuters reported citing Laura Tyler, technical director of BHP.

Tyler was further quoted by the news agency as saying, “This material can then be safely left in place, or used in building materials like carbon neutral cement or drywall.”

As a result of the studies, the company plans to undertake field trials at its Mt Keith tailings dam in WA this fiscal year.

The dam has a storage capacity of 40,000 tpa of CO₂ from the atmosphere, which is equivalent to offsetting 15,000 mid-size combustion engine cars.

According to the researchers, the dam has the potential to store even more CO₂ each year if the rate of mineral carbonation is increased using various engineering processes and solutions.

Tyler also noted that the company is incorporating new technologies to explore key minerals critical to the energy transition, such as nickel and copper, at depth.

In order to speed up decision-making, increase the potential for discoveries and reduce logistics requirements, the miner uses real-time sensors, multi-physical matrices and data analytics, according to Reuters.

Earlier this year, BHP agreed to supply nickel to manufacturer of electric vehicles (EVs) and battery storage systems Tesla.