Team:Exeter/Notebook/August21
Friday, 21 August
We got quotes for how much stash was going to cost.
Lab Work
Mark let us know that colonies had successfully grown on the plates from yesterday.
Collaboration with Experts/Industry
We had a meeting with Dr Hooper from British Limestone Association at 11:30am. She told us that the British Calcium Carbonate Federation (BCCF) produces much of the CaCO3 in the UK and both the BLA and BCCF are looking for ways to reduce their carbon emissions. So far they are investigating using Hydrogen as a fuel and carbon capture technologies. Both associations use the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (and will use the UK Emissions Trading Scheme post-Brexit) which makes their activities carbon-neutral. Lime also carbonates naturally over time, absorbing CO2. However Dr Hooper was interested in the potential of our project to make the overall production process carbon-negative in a shorter time span.
She explained to us that the two types of limestone which prevail in the industry are mined (quarried) limestone and precipitated limestone. Our product would fall into the latter category. The market for precipitated CaCO3 is more specialised but higher-value, because the CaCO3 is purer so can be used in products such as toothpaste and cosmetics. She mentioned that our production method could be useful in areas of the world which, unlike the UK, do not have limestone resources they can quarry. Our method also avoids the burning of raw materials present in traditional CaCO3 production practices, which means it wouldn't emit harmful chemicals to the environment.
Based on this guidance, we were able to refine the application of our project – we decided to focus on precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC) production and making sure our PCC met industry standards of purity.