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A new startup company relies on minerals to extract carbon dioxide from the air, one first of all Commercial deployment of so-called enhanced weathering efforts to mitigate climate change.
Heirloom Carbon Technology says that once it reaches commercial scale, it can remove carbon dioxide at a price of US$50 per ton, which will be much lower than estimate Used in other industrial methods. Its goal is to eliminate 1 billion tons of major greenhouse gases by 2035, thereby contributing to climate change.
The San Francisco-based company will announce on May 26 that it has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from major investors including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, and Prelude Ventures. (Industry sources say this number is in the millions.)
In addition, payment processing company Stripe, which has been funding demonstration projects for the technology, will announce plans to purchase nearly 250 tons of carbon removal from the company at a price of $2,054 per ton.
Noah Deich, president of Carbon180, a research company that advocates carbon removal and reuse, said the company can help solve one of the core challenges of carbon removal: the technical method engineering provided by direct air capture companies like Climeworks and Carbon is expected to bring permanent As a result, it has to pay a high price, and natural solutions (such as soil and forest compensation costs) are cheap, but usually attract attention Regarding the reliability and durability of carbon removal. Deich said that if Heirloom meets its cost targets, it can provide permanent relocation at a relatively affordable price. (Shashank Samala, CEO of Heirloom, participated in Carbon180’s Entrepreneur Residency Scholarship Program.)
However, the technology is still in its early stages, and the company will face numerous technical and market challenges in the process, including finding more buyers (such as Stripe) who are willing to pay high prices for decarbonization.
A novel method of carbon removal
Part of the reason why the joint venture has received attention is that the process was published in Nature Communications Last year, it was developed by outstanding researchers who explored the use of minerals to capture and store carbon. These include Greg Dipple of the University of British Columbia and Jennifer Wilcox, currently the Chief Deputy Minister of Fossil Energy in the Biden Administration. The lead author of the paper is Noah McQueen (Noah McQueen), a graduate student of Wilcox (Wilcox), who is now the research leader of Heirloom.
To prevent global warming by 2 degrees Celsius, 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide will need to be extracted from the atmosphere every year by 2050, and 20 billion tons of carbon dioxide will need to be extracted from the atmosphere every year by 2100. 2018 research.However, today only a few early-stage start-up companies are actively working on this work, exploring various methods, such as Creation machine Capture carbon dioxide molecules directly from the air, Convert biological waste into oil Inject into the ground, or develop systems to incentivize or validate natural methods, such as reforestation or agricultural practices that may absorb more carbon in the soil.
Many scientists and non-profit organizations have also studied the possibility of accelerating the process of extracting carbon dioxide from the air or rainwater by various minerals (especially those rich in silicates, calcium and magnesium).Some are grinding and spreading materials Like peridot, While others are using crushed by-products of mining operations, Even asbestos.
However, heirlooms took a completely different route.
How does this work
The company will cook materials such as limestone powder at a temperature of 400 to 900˚C, most of which is a combination of calcium and carbon dioxide, at a temperature high enough to decompose and release greenhouse gases. This is similar to the first step in the production of cement. (It can also use other raw materials, such as magnesite, which is the focus of Nature Communications.)
Heirloom eventually intends to rely on electric kilns. This means that the process can run on clean renewable energy and produce a stream of carbon dioxide free of fossil fuel impurities. The carbon dioxide can then be captured, compressed and injected into the ground relatively easily, basically storing it forever.
The remaining oxide minerals (if the process starts with limestone) will be calcium oxide, which can be scattered on the board in a thin layer, stacked vertically, and exposed to the open air. Think of the lunch plate on the shelf in the cafeteria.
These minerals are highly reactive and eager to combine with carbon dioxide in the air. The company’s researchers believe that with further enhancements, most materials will be combined with greenhouse gases within two weeks. It usually takes about a year.
The startup will not discuss these enhancements, but they may include ways to automatically mix materials to keep them exposed to the open air.
This process converts calcium oxide back to calcium carbonate (the main component of limestone), at which point the process can simply start again. The company believes that before these materials degrade too much to capture enough carbon dioxide, it can be reused at least 10 times (possibly dozens of times).
Scaling and carbon removal
Nowadays, all of this is very expensive, as can be seen from the price paid by Stripe. The payment company will announce on Wednesday that it will spend nearly $2.8 million to purchase carbon removal credits from six projects and will pay another $5.25 million when these efforts (or if these efforts are completed) reach certain milestones.Other recipients include carbon fiber, Running wave, Seachange, Mission Zero and Future Forest Company are planning a field trial of mineral weathering that involves spreading basalt on the forest floor.
Samala of Heirloom says these early high-priced purchases are critical to helping emerging carbon removal companies scale up and cut costs.
He said: “Deployment makes prices cheaper, frees up new markets, and further reduces costs.”
But finding more buyers willing to bear such costs will be a serious challenge for all carbon removal companies, especially considering cheap forest resources and Soil compensation Buyers are allowed to claim that they are balancing their emissions, regardless of whether such plans are reliable.
Nan Ransohoff, Stripe’s climate director, said that at the same time, the world needs to support more carbon removal research groups and start-up companies.
Ransohoff said that if we want to “achieve any goal” to reach the 2050 carbon reduction target, we must “significantly increase the number of projects.” “Ten billion-ton vehicles are a lot-it’s just a large number, and even in the best case, all the companies we have today cannot bring us there.”
lower the cost
Heirloom believes that they can significantly reduce costs because they avoid the use of other direct air capture methods to blow air into the system through expensive adsorbents and high-energy fans. In addition, they intend to use the experience of Samala’s early co-founders to rely heavily on robots, software and other automation technologies to speed up and cut process costs. Automation time.
Clea Kolster, Scientific Director of Lowercarbon Capital, said Heirloom will also take advantage of several other developments, including improvements in electric-powered thermal technology, the reduction of renewable energy costs, and the increasing decarbonization of decarbonized power grids around the world.
But their ultimate cost and ability to expand quickly will depend to a large extent on the degree and speed with which these things will continue to improve.
Addison Stark, director of the energy and environmental program at Clark Street Associates, a consulting firm, said that under current conditions, generating the necessary temperature from electricity with today’s technology may be direct burning of coal or natural gas. 5 to 10 times.Created Nearest joule paper On this topic. In addition, if the power source itself is not carbon-free, then it will destroy the benefits of carbon removal.
CarbonPlan executive director Jeremy Freeman (Jeremy Freeman) said that another issue is that heirlooms can reduce the time required to bond oxides and carbon dioxide, and to what extent and how to do it reliably, which will greatly affect economic. Carbon removal work and helped evaluate projects applying for the Stripe program.
Heirloom will also have to raise more funds to eventually build a demonstration factory.
The company’s main business model will be to sell carbon removal credits to companies or individuals through a voluntary compensation system or a government-based carbon program. Heirloom has made its products more and more attractive because their costs have fallen, and public policies have provided carrots or sticks to make companies or governments more attractive (or more necessary) to pay for carbon removal over time ).
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