marcuslima

I love the idea of crowdfunding! Definitely something we'll look into down the line.

It's actually better, we consumer concetrated brine in our process, so we don't create a high local salinity that disturbs marine life. In fact we're a pretty good fit for a bolt-on to existing RO desalination plants. Let me know if anyone's connected to someone at a plant like that!

Thanks! Yes it's pretty wild - fully 8% of global emissions!

Honestly, our biggest problem right now is moving quickly. In the next 6 months our biggest problem will be getting planning permission to stick large pipes into the sea to process large amounts of seawater ;) We don't discharge anything but seawater undersatured with CO2 so we're not negtaively impacting the surroundings. But government is slow with these things

yep!

Thanks a lot for that! We have very little published at the minute for patent reasons. It's actually pretty neat as we consume the waste brine in the process, so nothing to disturb local marine life as you have issues with at reverse osmosis desalination plants

Thanks! Yes that's absolutely true, that could've been more specific. In the modern world almost every house needs concrete for something, at a minimum for the foundations.

We're actually working on figuring this out. Our current calculations assume we need to process a huge amount of seawater (11,000 tonnes per tonne of CO2), if the CO2 is the limiting factor (2000 umol). However our R&D suggests undersaturated seawater re-absorbs CO2 from the air surprisingly quickly. Might be able to get this 10x lower

That estimate of cost to society should tell us something when contrasted with the actual prices being levied right now. Hopefully we'll get closer to that number eventually!

Hopefully the US does this: https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/05/06/proposed-45q-ta...

We're competitive at scale. This does require us to hit our CAPEX targets and to capitalize on cheap renewable sources of electricity that are becoming prevalent

Yes, thanks for clarifying

Thanks! 1. We are entering the product testing stage with our cement producing parnters in the next few months, so I'll have a better answer for you then. But from a chemical composition point of view, our product is purer than mined limestone and so should perform better. 2. Biggest bottleneck from our perspective is nailing planning permission to build our plants quickly enough to supply cement producers.

Unfortunately no blog post or anything like that just yet. Website is very light on details for now, we haven't prioritised updating (+ some patent considerations).

The ocean and the atmosphere exist in an equilibrium there is a 'balance' of relative concentration of CO2. Because CO2 can dissolve in water as CO3 and HCO3 the concentration is skewed to a higher concentration in oceans. When we take out CO2 from the oceans we lower the relative concentration, so we shift it out of balance. So the entire ocean becomes the surface area for re-absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere to re-establish that balance!

Well understood! The ocean is supersaturated in the ocean (ie. there is about 20x more of it dissolved than you would expect). In fact it's the single largest deposit of calcium in the world. Risk of running out is zero. Calcium in the ocean comes from dissolved limestone (this does not emit CO2)

They're pretty good too ;)

Yep, exactly! The world needs CaO for cement. We have a carbon neutral process for making it. It's actually overall negative as not all carbonates we extract are usable in cement production. But as far as cement producers are concerned it's carbon neutral.

Yeah, that's the core of it. Climeworks absorbs CO2 on their amine solid sorbent surface before releasing it by heating up the sorbent to prepare it for a new round of CO2. That CO2 then needs to be stored somewhere. I'm not familiar with the inner workings of Climeworks, but if I were there that would be what concerned me the most. I know they're testing a mineralization solutipn with Carbfix in Iceland that could be promising, but expensive. We're not at sufficient scale to offer credits to consumers. but this could be on the agenda in a few months. As for cost per tonne this depends a lot on the commercial arrangements we have in place. More meaningful is the energy consumption per tonne which is <4 MWh/ tonne. This will be reduced to 3MWh/tonne. Based on current commercial conversations we're expecting a CO2 price below $50/t for our first plant

Haha, fair point ;)

Great thoughts! Our strategy so far has mainly been focused on targeting large producers of cement and glass. We're in the process of signing LOIs here. Agreed that getting scaling right will be the big challenge

X Prize is on our radar, only a shame we mised the cement specific one. Though the dollar value on this one is certainly better

The calcium all comes from dissolved calcium bicarbonate - we trigger precipitation by shifting bicarbonate to carbonate ions, which are insoluble. Essentially we acceelrate the oceanic carbonate cycle

Thanks! Yeah, we think it will be. But more importantly, the old way isn't a viable option. It's effectively off the table. Sweden has already banned mining of limestone (https://www.ribaj.com/products/cementa-limestone-mine-suspen...) The product comes out as a really finely ground powder

Our synthetic limestone will be on par with mined limestone. At scale when accounting for the higher calcium content per tonne and value of carbon we expect to be cheaper even than mined limestone.

You hit the nail on the head there. The most important cost factor is energy. We're looking at <3MWh/tonne of CO2 removed. Somewhat higher than some competing DAC companies that claim 1.5-2.5MWh. But these guys have the added cost of finding permanent storage of their gaseous CO2. Cost estimates for this, at scale, are as high as $100/tonne

Thanks a lot! Stay posted for open roles - we'll be needing to add to our team in the next few months.

Thanks for pointing out - will sort this out!

Haha, definitely. Got any links to Elon Musk? ;)

Thanks!

Absolutely! We're in the early stages of developing an idea like this. We're working with a californian construction start-up to reduce embodied carbon in their building materials.

We've also thought about working with some big name companies like Apple, Amazon, big name hotels etc. to build a carbon neutral office/store/hotel. Haven't been able to reach the right people here yet though. Any intros/suggestions are appreciated!

Nice catch! I'm orignally from Norway. Heimdal is the norse god of foresight. Something the world needs in buckets when it comes to climate change.

Our experience so far has been that the environmental angle has been sufficient to persuade. Cement companies are in a bit of a bind given the attention to their sustainability efforts. However we're pitching ourselves as a cost competitive solution. Depending on geography we'll be able to positively affect their bottom line through the carbon credits system. Under the European ETS for example, they reward companies that reduce emissions (https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/...)

Haha gotcha, European ETS is on a bit of a tear at the minute. Has risen to ~$70/tonne CO2

Our current cost per tonne is in the same order of magnitude when including the carbon value from the European ETS. The key success criteria for making large plants profitable will be connecting to cheap electricity at <$50/MWh we're in the black

Thanks so much!