[ad_1]
A new startup is based on minerals that extract carbon dioxide from the air one of them the first commercial efforts to spread what is called improved weathering to slow climate change.
Heirloom Carbon Technologies says it can do $ 50 a tonne to get rid of carbon dioxide once it reaches commercial scale, and that would go down below. calculations for other industrial perspectives. By 2035, its goal is to remove 1 billion tons of the main greenhouse gas that fuels climate change.
The San Francisco-based company announced on May 26 that it has raised an unsold amount of money among major investors, including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital and Prelude Ventures. (There are millions of industry sources).
In addition, payment processing company Stripe, which has been funding technology demonstration projects, will inform the company that it plans to purchase nearly 250 tons of carbon removal at $ 2,054 per ton.
Noah Deich, president of research firm Carbon180, which advocates for carbon removal and reuse, said the company could help address a basic carbon removal challenge: the technical approaches offered by direct air capture companies like Climeworks and Carbon. Engineering promises sustainable results, but it costs a lot, natural solutions like soil and forest clearing are cheap but often create concerns to find out how reliable and durable carbon removal is. If Heirloom achieves its cost targets, it can offer permanent removal at a relatively affordable price, Deich says. (Shashank, CEO of Samala Heirloom, participated in Carbon180’s Entrepreneurial Residency Scholarship Program.)
But the technology is in its infancy and the company will face a number of technical and market challenges, including finding more buyers willing to pay high prices for carbon sequestration in the coming years — like Stripe.
A new approach to carbon sequestration
The project is attracting attention in part because of the process described in a paper published in the year Nature Communications last year, it was developed by renowned researchers studying the use of minerals for carbon capture and storage. These include Greg Dipple of the University of British Columbia and Jennifer Wilcox, currently Deputy Secretary General of Fossil Energy in the Biden administration. The lead author of the paper was Noah McQueen, a graduate student at Wilcox and now head of research at Heirloom.
Preventing global warming by 2 ˚C would require the release of 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 2050 by 2050 and 20 billion by 2100 by 2100, 2018 study. But mostly a few start-up startups are actively working on that today, exploring a variety of means like this creating machines which emit carbon dioxide molecules directly from the air, conversion of biowaste into oil this is injected underground, or systems are being developed to stimulate or validate natural approaches such as reforestation or agricultural practices that may take up more carbon in soils.
Several scientists and non-profit researchers have investigated the possibility of various minerals (especially those rich in silicate, calcium and magnesium) accelerating the processes of extracting carbon dioxide from air or rainwater. Some are grinding and expanding materials like olivine, while others use already pulverized by-products from mining operations, as well as asbestos.
Heirloom is taking a very different path, however.
How it works
The company will prepare materials such as limestone soil, mostly calcium, which is associated with carbon dioxide, at temperatures between 400 and 900 C, enough to release and release greenhouse gases. It is similar to the first step in producing cement. (It can also use other raw materials, such as magnesite, the focus of Nature Communications paper).
Heirloom ultimately wants to rely on electricity-fired furnaces. This means that the process can run on clean renewable energy sources and generate an impurity-free stream of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels. This carbon dioxide can be relatively easily captured, compressed and injected underground, essentially storing it permanently.
Residual mineral oxides, which would be calcium oxide if the process begins with limestone, can be distributed in thin layers between the sheets, stacked vertically and in the open air. Think of lunch trays on coffee shop shelves.
The minerals are highly reactive, eager to bind to carbon dioxide in the air. The company’s researchers say with a few additional improvements, most of the materials will be connected to the greenhouse gas within two weeks. It would usually take about a year.
Improvements will not be discussed at launch, but automatic ways of mixing materials can be introduced to continuously show the open air.
This process would convert calcium oxide back into calcium carbonate, the main component of limestone, and then the process can be started again. The company believes it can reuse materials at least 10 times, perhaps dozens, to capture enough carbon dioxide before it degrades too much.
Carbon removal
All of this is very expensive today, as reflected in the price Stripe pays. The payment company will announce on Wednesday that it will spend nearly $ 2.8 million to purchase carbon removal credits for the six projects, plus another $ 5.25 million when these efforts meet (or if they meet) certain milestones. They are among the other recipients Built Carbon, Running Tide, Seachange, Mission Zero and Future Forest Company, which is planning an experiment in the mineral weathering area involving the spreading of basalt rock on a forest floor.
Samala of Heirloom says these high-priced early purchases are key to helping emerging carbon removal companies increase and reduce costs.
“It’s the implementation that makes this cheaper, frees up new markets and further reduces costs,” he says.
But finding more buyers willing to bear such costs will be a serious challenge for all carbon sequestration companies, especially cheap forests and soil compensations which allow buyers to claim that they are balancing emissions, whether such programs or not reliable.
Meanwhile, Nan Ransohoff, head of climate at Stripe, says the world needs to support more carbon removal groups and startups.
Ransohoff says we need to “radically increase the number of projects” if we want to “take any shot” to hit these 2050 carbon removal targets. “Ten gigatonnes is a lot, it’s just a massive number, and even in the best case scenario, not all the companies we have today will get us there.”
Reduce costs
Heirloom is confident that it can significantly reduce costs because it avoids expensive sorbents and energy-intensive fans in other direct approaches to trapping air through the system. It also wants to rely on robots, software and other automations to speed up and reduce process costs, drawing on Samala’s previous experience. Automation Time.
Heirloom will benefit from a number of other advances underway, including improvements in electricity-generated heat technology, reduced renewable energy costs, and increasingly decarbonized grids around the world, says Clea Kolster, science director at Lowercarbon Capital.
But the final costs and the ability to grow quickly will depend on how much and how quickly these things continue to improve.
Today, creating the necessary temperatures with electricity using current technologies can be 5 to 10 times more expensive than burning coal or natural gas directly, said Addison Stark, director of the energy and environmental program at consulting firm Clark Street Associates. Last work published in Joule on the subject. Moreover, if the source of electricity itself is carbon-free, it harms the benefits of removing carbon.
Another question is how much Heirloom will reliably reduce the time it takes for oxides to bind to carbon dioxide, which will have a huge impact on the economy, says CarbonPlan executive director Jeremy Freeman. efforts to remove carbon and helped submit projects submitted for the Stripe program.
Heirloom will have to get a much bigger round of funding to eventually build the exhibition plant.
The main business model of the company will be to sell carbon removal credits to corporations or individuals, either through voluntary compensation systems or through government-based carbon programs. Heirloom’s offerings are becoming more attractive as costs go down and carrots or sticks make public policies more attractive — or more necessary — for companies or governments to remove carbon over time.
[ad_2]
Source link
