Mineralization of flue gas CO2 with coproduction of valuable magnesium carbonate by means of magnesium chloride

CO2 mineralization and utilization is a new area for reducing the CO2 emissions. By reacting with natural mineral or industrial waste, CO2 can be transformed into valuable solid carbonate (such as calcium carbonate or magnesium carbonate) with recovery of some products simultaneously. In this paper, a novel method was proposed to mineralize CO2 by means of magnesium chloride with small energy consumption. In this method, magnesium chloride was firstly transformed into magnesium hydroxide by electrolysis. The formed magnesium hydroxide showed high reactivity to mineralize CO2. In our study, even at low concentration, CO2 can be effectively mineralized by this method, which makes it possible to directly mineralize flue gas CO2, avoiding the expensive process of CO2 capture and purification. Moreover, valuable products such as hydromagnesite and nesquehonite can be recovered by this method. Because of the wide distribution of magnesium chloride in nature, large-scale CO2 mineralization is potential by means of magnesium chloride.