Carbon dioxide sequestration in Limestone The chemical reaction where dissolved carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid and then reacts with various calcium containing minerals to form calcium carbonate and bicarbonate is rather slow. I know that several years ago there was research into possible ways to speed up the reaction, possibly as a candidate for a truly long term way to scrub $\mathrm{CO}_2$ from the atmosphere. The inspiration for this idea is to speed up the part of the geologic carbon cycle that regulates atmospheric $\mathrm{CO}_2$ concentration.

Does anyone know how the research into catalysts or processes to speed this up are going?
This process does not rely on catalysts, but it addresses the essence of the question. The process described is to inject liquefied carbon dioxide into basalt formations, even if the basalt is very old. This makes the it plausible that we could scrub the excess $\mathrm{CO}_2$ from the atmosphere by:


growing plants,
burning those plants, capturing the CO2, and
burying that carbon using, partly, the energy from the burned plants.