Engineering: A carbon storage solution in dry regions (Nature)

Recycling water in processes used to store carbon underground could enable carbon storage in regions with limited access to water. A pilot programme to store carbon with no need for external water sources is reported in Nature.

Carbon capture and storage is a technology to help remove carbon from the atmosphere and permanently sequester it underground. Traditionally, this is accomplished by injecting high-pressure carbon dioxide (CO₂) into the ground below impermeable rocks. For regions without these impermeable rocks, CO2 can be dissolved in water and incorporated into the rock through geochemical reactions called mineralization. However, applying this process at scale requires large amounts of water.

Eric Oelkers and colleagues present a pilot project to eliminate the need for external water for mineral carbon capture and storage. The location for their project is in western Saudi Arabia, a region with oil refineries that emit large quantities of CO₂, underscoring the need for carbon storage technologies. The area is underlaid by 21–30-million-year-old permeable volcanic rock, which cannot absorb carbon without mineralization. The technology uses a recirculation system in which excess water from the first injection site is reused for subsequent injections, with the CO₂-charged water being continuously circulated between the two wells for just over one year. The authors report that approximately 70% of the CO₂ was incorporated into the rock within 10 months, demonstrating feasibility as a future carbon storage technique.

This method adapts existing processes to reduce the amount of water needed to store carbon in the earth in a scalable way. The authors suggest that this technology could be particularly useful for arid regions where water is scarce.

• Article
• Open access
• Published: 25 March 2026

Oelkers, E.H., Arkadakskiy, S., Ahmed, Z. et al. CO₂ subsurface mineral storage by its co-injection with recirculating water. Nature 651, 954–958 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10130-5

News & Views: Pilot project paves way to storing CO₂ underground as minerals in arid countries
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00635-4

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