The mineral olivine may not appear to be much more than a pretty green rock, but its uses extend far beyond gems and jewelry.
Northeastern University graduate student Jenna Woods, whose undergraduate co-op took her to Milan to study the mineral, said olivine could become an important part of the global solution to climate change.
The mineral plays a crucial role in the carbon cycle, which regulates the Earth’s temperature, Woods said. When the rock comes in contact with carbon dioxide and water in the atmosphere, it undergoes a chemical process that helps remove carbon from the atmosphere. For our carbon-rich planet and in the context of excess carbon dioxide emissions, having an abundance of olivine could be a significant advantage for carbon removal.
But that process takes millennia. So Woods is working to accelerate it, an effort made possible by her co-op.
Woods said that when she first applied to be a part of the co-op program, she really wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her degree in environmental studies and international affairs. She had thought about working in global environmental governance, but wasn’t finding co-op opportunities in that field that piqued her interest.
But then she heard about carbon capture technology, which works to trap carbon emissions from industrial sources and power plants to prevent the gas from going back into the atmosphere. “I became really interested with the fact that there are a lot of technically viable climate solutions that aren’t necessarily moving at the same pace that their science is,” she said. In other words, “The science ends up being really, really viable,” Woods explained, but there’s a gap between taking that technology and actually deploying it.
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