>>2425743there are just a lot of things i take issue with it. the scale is enormous, and even diverting all the waste, and weathering all of it in a year, is still quite a small fraction of the overall CO2 emissions.
the composition of basalt varies, but you can only lead to net sequestration with inosilicates, (SiO3), which removes one net mole CO2 for each molar equivalent of SiO3.
assuming a perfect basalt, where roughly 50w% is silicon dioxide, and 50% is some inosilicate, say all of it is CaMgSi2O6.
at a molar mass of ~217 g/mol.
two equivalents of SiO3, so every mole of that inosilicate sequesters two moles of CO2.
given CO2's molar mass of 44 g/mol, every ~2.5 "units" of inosilicate sequesters 1 net unit of CO2. ( 217 / 2*44 ).
given that this assumed perfect basalt is 50% inosilicate by mass, every 5 units of basalt can sequester one net unit of CO2.
therefore, given 3 billion tons of waste basalt fines, you can effectively "remove" (because otherwise there's an equilibrium state), 0.6 billion tons of CO2.
barely over 5% of the CO2 released into the ocean just last year.
the scale of it, is enormous.
