Viable magnesium ecosystem: exploiting Mg from magnesium silicates with carbon capture and utilization (MAGNEX)

MAGNEX aims to alleviate the current criticality of magnesium (Mg) supply in the EU by addressing bottlenecks in extracting Mg from highly abundant local resources: natural rocks and industrial waste-streams. To reach the required economy of scale MAGNEX applies a circular economy approach to cities, which will upcycle critical metals while capturing CO2 emissions from flue gases and producing sustainable construction materials from industrial side streams. That will enable the economy of scale via new products and services, creating market pull for carbon-storing construction materials, opening paths for new business models while structuring socio-economic-legislative shifts to support those novel roles of Mg in the economy of cities. MAGNEX is a cross-disciplinary project uniting the strengths of three well-established research units from the University of Oulu, Åbo Akademi University and Tampere University.