Lab confirms high-carbon sequestration potential of Nickel Creek’s Wellgreen deposit

19th December 2022 By: Marleny Arnoldi - Deputy Editor Online

TSX-listed Nickel Creek Platinum has announced that the Wellgreen deposit at its Nickel Shäw project, in Yukon, is capable of sequestrating about 34 400 t/y of carbon dioxide, or 2 100 t/y of carbon dioxide per million tonnes of tailings.

The project is a large undeveloped nickel sulphide project, which also contains copper, cobalt and platinum group metals mineralisation.

Nickel Creek had commissioned the University of British Columbia’s CarbMinLab principal investigator Dr Gregory Dipple to assess the project’s carbon capture and storage capability.

Previous work at CarMinLab confirmed the presence of brucite from processed mine waste, which is a magnesium-rich mineral known to react quickly with carbon dioxide in air, while Dipple has now confirmed a high rate of carbon capture capability and thereby the project’s potential to have a lower overall carbon footprint.

This will provide value to downstream processors of nickel, particularly in the electric battery vehicle market, where reducing carbon footprints is a critical part of the green economy.

Nickel Creek has warned that the composite sample being used in the current study is not necessarily representative of the overall Wellgreen deposit.

The company is evaluating further work which will include the creation of a mineralogy model based on the project’s geochemical database to assess the spatial distribution of rocks within the deposit that have high potential to sequester carbon.