Guarav Bhaduri and Lidija Siller were
trying to understand how Nature turns CO2 gas into rock.  Their university, Newcastle U, became enthusiastic and published this:



The research their university is publicizing is a paper:  "Nickel nanoparticles catalyse reversible hydration of carbon dioxide for mineralization carbon capture and storage", published online by Catalysis Science & Technology Jan 17 2013 doi: 10.1039/C3CY20791A   
A BBC News article quotes co-author Dr. Lidija Siller:  “You bubble CO2 through the water in which you have nickel nanoparticles and you are trapping much more carbon than you would normally – and then you can easily turn it into calcium carbonate..."
"...It seems too good to be true, but it works”
The NU press release quotes Siller:  "the result was the complete removal of CO2″.  
Lead author, PhD student Gaurav Bhaduri, is quoted: “ [the nickel catalyst]  is very cheap, a thousand times cheaper than carbon anhydrase”  The two researchers have patented the process and are looking for investors.  
They compare their nickel to anhydrase because Nature uses anhydrase to mineralize carbon.  But humans trying to mimic nature with anhydrase, so far, have had problems creating the material cheaply enough, and they have needed to control pH.  Other ideas require too much energy.   
Siller and Bhaduri were trying to do better with anhydrase:  they were going to "mobilize" it using the large surface area of nanoparticles.  They chose nickel because it is magnetic, a property they knew would come in handy when it came time to recycle it from the process.  To fully understand what nickel and anhydrase could do if combined, they had to study what nickel nanoparticles do on their own.  
That's when they made this discovery.