Decarbonizing the
Foundation of Our World
We break rock, cement, and industrial materials
with CO₂ to build a decarbonized future
We’re turning the world's biggest industrial challenges into climate solutions.
We are developing CoreBurst™ technology, a scalable platform that transforms energy-intensive material processing into an opportunity for permanent carbon dioxide removal. By fracturing materials from within using CO₂, we drastically reduce energy consumption and eliminate grinding media, offering transformative benefits for mining, cement, and recycling industries.
“In all of the mining, milling, smelting and refining processes, comminution is by far the largest energy consumer. It is estimated to consume 3-4% of all electric power generated in the world, which translates into high costs and greenhouse gas production.”
— Natural Resources Canada
How it works
CoreBurst™ represents a paradigm shift in comminution (particle reduction, i.e. crushing + grinding).
Instead of fighting a material's compressive strength, we leverage its natural tensile weakness, which is 10 to 30 times lower. The process uses CO₂ as a working fluid that penetrates micro-cracks and pores. A rapid depressurization causes the trapped CO₂ to expand, generating powerful internal tensile forces that fracture the material from within.
This innovative mechanism leads to projected energy savings of approximately 50% compared to conventional methods.
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Applications Across Industries
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Sustainable Mining
For the mining sector, CoreBurst™ lowers operational costs, improves mineral liberation, and provides a pathway to produce "carbon-negative" critical minerals. We see the potential to also be used to valorize waste rock and tailings, turning liabilities into assets.
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Cement & Concrete Decarbonization
CoreBurst™ enhances the efficiency of limestone grinding and revolutionizes concrete recycling. By cleanly separating aggregates and mineralizing CO₂ in the cement paste, it enables a true circular economy for one of the world's most-used materials.
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Carbon Dioxide Removal
We are currently investigating the potential of CoreBurst™ to transform industrial wastes like recycled concrete, mine tailings and steel slags into assets for permanent, gigatonne-scale Carbon Dioxide Removal.
The CoreBurst™ Advantage
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Integrated Carbon Removal
The high-pressure CO₂ environment accelerates carbon mineralization, permanently locking CO₂ into solid, stable minerals. We project sequestration of ~17 kg of CO₂ per tonne of standard material, and up to 160 kg of CO₂ per tonne for highly reactive feedstocks like ultramafic ores.
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Feedstock Flexibility
CoreBurst™ is adaptable to a wide range of materials, turning industrial byproducts into assets. We can process primary ores, limestone for cement, construction & demolition waste and are currently testing other materials.
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No Grinding Media
Our process requires no consumable steel grinding media. This significantly reduces operational costs, supply chain complexity, and the Scope 3 emissions associated with manufacturing and transporting steel balls or rods.
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Reduced Water Use
CoreBurst™ can operate in a dry or low-water environment, offering a critical advantage for industries in water-scarce regions and reducing the environmental impact of processing.
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Selective Comminution
Evidence suggests fractures propagate along natural grain boundaries. This enables superior mineral liberation in mining and cleaner separation of aggregates from cement paste in concrete recycling.
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No Gravity Required
Our process does not depend on gravity, opening future applications for material processing and recycling in space.
FAQ
Frequently Answered Questions
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We exploit the fact that rocks are 10 times weaker under tension than they are under compression. Our CoreBurst™ technology, promotes tensile breakage by using CO₂ as a working fluid that fractures rock from within. This is achieved as a grinding process in a mine under a closed-loop, pressurized vessel where thermodynamic variations of pressure and temperature cause this tensile pulverization.
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Our comminution technology does not use mechanical means of breaking rock, thus it does away with grinding media like steel balls, rods or liners currently utilized in most grinding equipment. This results in net energy savings and green house gases (GHG) reduction. Also, the current variation of our technology does not use water although we are studying “wet approaches” for process optimization for certain materials.
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Not at all; completely different technologies, purpose and by-products. Fracking is the injection of gas/fluids into bedrock that causes fractures that in turn, liberates trapped gas/oil (with serious environmental consequences). Our technology is a rock grinding technology (particle reduction) that is applied to the ore that has been extracted from mines, and that aims to liberate minerals at a lower energy and GHG thresholds compared to existing grinding technologies (our latest estimates point to 55% energy savings). Furthermore, because our technology operates in a closed-loop, pressurized CO₂ environment, we are observing early evidence of carbon sequestration with certain ores as a desirable by-product.
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Our technology operates as a closed-loop system and recirculates the CO₂ used in the process.
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As a breakthrough energy innovation, we are still in a prototype/R&D phase discovering and learning the capabilities and limitations of this technology; however we expect to deploy the first industrial pilot in 2027.
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Natural Resources Canada, Innovate BC, Chrysalix Ventures, BHP, BC Hydro, the Government of South Australia, NSERC/Mitacs, MICA Network, NRC-IRAP, University of British Columbia, Foresight Cleantech Accelerator, CanExport and Creative Destruction Lab.
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The technology was born out of the need of reducing energy utilization during the comminution process (particle reduction) in mining which is responsible for up to 4% of global electricity consumption. Our waterless process is estimated to reduce energy consumption by half when compared to traditional comminution equipment used today. An additional environmental benefit we are observing in recent experiments is the evidence of carbon sequestration occurring in certain ores.
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Potentially yes, since our technology does not need gravity to operate. We have been in discussions with some research centres in Canada and Australia to explore space mining and recycling applications.
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Yes. If interested please get in touch for further details.
Currently looking for investors for our first pilot. Interested?
Get in touch!
Rockburst Technologies Inc.
800-525 West 8th Avenue
Vancouver, BC V5Z 1C6
Canada