In March, the Department of Energy (DoE) announced they were going to putting $22M into research for capturing carbon dioxide from the air. They just announced the fundees! Join panelist Tito Jankowski of AirMiners and Negative and follow along on this page with us as he walks us through the groups and some of the science behind these processes.
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to Carbon Removal Newsroom. I’m Ross Kenyon. I am the lead strategist at the Nori Carbon Removal Marketplace. Today I have with me at long last, it’s been too long, Tito Jankowski. Hey, Tito.
Tito Jankowski: Hey, hey.
Ross Kenyon: Hey. Yeah, I’ll eat you so many things with air miners, with impossible labs, with negative. You’re just in the thick of all things carbon removal, consumer products made out of captured carbon. Leadership in the air miners online community, you’re just plugged into carbon removal.
Tito Jankowski: That’s right. There’s a lot of good work that needs to happen. And I’m really excited to be working with so many great people, including from the air miners community. We just had an event today on the life cycle assessment in partnership with the University of Michigan. So gosh, there’s just so much opportunity out there for people working and pulling carbon from the air.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s fantastic. There is news, a very large amount of money, well large in terms of carbon removal, which those numbers are often smaller than they are in other fields, but the Office of Fossil Energy and the Department of Energy issued a fair number of projects that they are financially supporting to some extent recently. Maybe if you could give us a nice sense of what is going on, maybe beyond what I’ve said, if you And then we could just walk through some of these projects and let people know what the DOE is funding.
Tito Jankowski: Great. Yeah, so this came through recently that there’s these grants available that have been, they basically launched the program back in March. And then now they’ve, the Department of Energy has selected the Startups and research endeavors to fund and this specific round of funding was there was kind of point source capture and then there was also money that was specifically for direct air capture and that definitely caught my attention. This is all under the heading of the DOE’s Carbon Utilization Program. And yeah, so there’s other activities that are happening as part of that program.
Back in June, they invested $17 million into the other carbon utilization projects. So this is all, you know, years are turning in terms of getting R&D and business and innovation booted up around capturing carbon dioxide, either from point source or directly from the air.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it’s curious to see this and good that some of these early stage projects are getting support and attention. I imagine it’s a busy, exciting week for all of them. But yeah, maybe, okay, if you wanna follow along with us, which might be easier for you, I imagine hearing a gigantic list of companies and projects might be overwhelming. The link is in the show notes for the FOA 2187 and 2188 project selections. So why don’t we just start at the top, Tito, and we can work through them.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, that’s awesome. Let’s see. So we’re looking at the top of FOA 2187, and we’ve got, how do you have this organized? So we’ve got this, a Cruller Middle, a lot of these things where you read the name a long time and you never say it out loud. Our Seelore Middle. Our Seelore, I like that.
Ross Kenyon: I don’t know. If you work there, you’ll have to reach out and let us know how we butchered it.
Tito Jankowski: That’s right. So with this big section of projects, it’s nine projects, these are all really under the heading of Pulling carbon dioxide from industrial point source projects. For example, this first one is a carbon capture system grabbing 50% to 70% of emissions from a blast furnace. That’s a theme here. A lot of these are pulling from industrial A lot of this also reminds me of the Carbon XPRIZE in the sense that their initial Carbon XPRIZE is focused on pulling carbon dioxide from industrial sources. So this is totally in line with that in the sense of how do you pull 70% of the carbon dioxide emissions from blast furnace gas.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, this is for steel. So it says it will also help develop carbon reduction technologies for use in the steel sector. So that will be interesting to track.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, especially there was that, there was that report out around the kind of the growth of the steel industry as carbon capture and direct air capture take off. I think it was some, what was the report was like, The global consumption of steel would like triple or something if in order to meet the goals of direct air capturing a certain amount of carbon dioxide.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I saw that. So clearly for the LCA, well, you did the thing on it today. So that’s clearly not going to fly. We just triple steel production and steel still emitting such large amounts. So it sounds like they have the work cut out for them.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, exactly. And the next one is the CO2 Mint Colorado project, the LHCO2 Mint. And that’s another industrial area where there’s a lot of carbon dioxide emission. I believe it’s 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions every year come from Come from cement and building materials. And so this company down in Valencia, they’re working on a process to improve that. It sounds to me kind of along the lines of some other projects that you’ve probably heard of in the sense that they’re removing carbon dioxide from flue gas. But, you know, they’ve submitted an application.
There’s some details or some different technology that they’re obviously using. And they’re looking at 2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year for this system.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, they’re called electric core. That’s cool. So, so far we have steel and we have cement and concrete generally. And maybe we should say here, too, that the DOE portion of the funding is for close to, if not exactly, a million and a half US dollars plus some other non-DOE funding, too, which I’m curious what exactly that might be. But so a lot of these projects are ending up, at least from what we’re seeing, in total close to two million. Some of them are much, much bigger than that, though. But okay, I guess we should probably tell people how much they’re looking at funding-wise.
That sounds good. How about this next one? Technology and Research Inc. Oh, yeah. Oh, Membrane Technology and Research Inc. My mistake.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, so similar to this idea of pulling carbon dioxide from blast furnace gas, this one is focused on coal power plants. So they’re developing some new technology for coal Coal power plants. I believe this is what you would call clean coal. I never really knew what clean coal was, but I imagine that’s something along those lines. So they got about a million and a half dollars to develop that technology. And they’re in Newark, so they’re close by. And again, that was a theme with a lot of this, was I was really surprised to see a lot of these new names and new companies popping up.
We have a lot of stuff in the Ayrmeier’s Index, but these three so far, I mean, those definitely were not on my radar. And this company’s over in Newark, which is just over the bridge from where I’m at in San Mateo.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, absolutely. Very, very interesting to see these clusters. Now this one, next one’s out of Danbury, Connecticut called Praxair.
Tito Jankowski: So Praxair, they’re a familiar name. I’ve heard of that.
Ross Kenyon: They’re huge, aren’t they?
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, yeah, they’re a huge one. So what this is, they’re doing an initial engineering design study for a carbon dioxide capture system in Louisiana. So again, this is interesting. Praxair, to me, they’re known as a gas supplier. So if you want to buy tanks of carbon dioxide gas, if you’re a brewery or a greenhouse, you would go to.
Ross Kenyon: I think I’ve seen them for welding supplies too.
Tito Jankowski: OK. Yeah, yeah. So a lot of stuff that comes in bottles or stuff that comes in tanks. And so they’re looking at how to capture carbon dioxide from this Steam methane reforming hydrogen plant. So they’re looking at how to grab carbon dioxide gas, presumably to bottle it and sell it as part of this process.
Ross Kenyon: Cool, that makes sense. And so all the ones named so far are all ending up in total close to $2 million per project, but we’re entering a new subtopic. And this is primarily focused on ethanol plants. So let’s dive into this next one here coming out of North Dakota.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, and this is the first one that’s coming up as an R&D effort, which I think is really cool in partnership with the university. I think that’s really important to see more of that pipeline. Technologies don’t magically appear out of thin air. They’re either built in garages bedrooms, but a lot of it, and so much of it, and especially the air mining field is, you know, it’s building on years, if not decades, of university-funded research. So this project is processing 200,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, built on top of this ethanol facility.
And that’s the theme for the next couple companies. They’re all pulling carbon dioxide from ethanol plants.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, this next one’s from Chevron and it’s the biggest monetary leap we’ve seen so far with a total of more than 16 million US dollars. So yeah, you’ve heard about oil majors being involved in carbon capture. Here is an example.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, 13 million bucks. So Sivante comes up a lot in this as you’re reading through this brief. So they most recently came up on my radar because they launched a partnership with Climeworks a few months ago, but here they’re working with Chevron to Design, construct, commission a plant. So again, they’re trying to use this new Savante technology post-combustion. So I’m not sure how that technology works, but it sounds like in this case, they’re applying it to an ethanol plant.
Ross Kenyon: And this next one as well, close to $17 million in total. And this is from Ion Clean Energy Inc. Out of Boulder.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, so first $13 million and they’re going to operate an engineering scale system to capture 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide per day. So if you calculate the cost per tonne of carbon dioxide on that one, definitely an outlier there. And again, a new name to me, Boulder, Colorado, for me hasn’t come up on a It’s come up a lot in terms of capturing carbon from the air, but yeah, that’s what’s happening up there. Might have to take a trip to Boulder to see what’s going on, because with the combined funding, it’s $16 million, so that’s pretty substantial.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’d be curious to know as well. Not a ton of information here, but that’s okay, because we have a lot to get through. We’re not going to be a very, very long episode, but I’m sure many of these will deserve a future investigation. But with that, looks like we have another subtopic. What’s going on in this section here?
Tito Jankowski: This is carbon capture testing on coal flue gas. And so what that means is, it’s just a, let’s see.
Ross Kenyon: Is this funny to you, Tito? This isn’t a serious topic. Yeah.
Tito Jankowski: What is this? It’s like a word salad of all these different carbon capture testing things. It’s funny because this is like, I mean, yeah, this is $5 billion going into this project. I’m like, okay, which is this? Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto. It also doesn’t ring a bell. I’m like, gosh, is this just like something else that is new or they’ve been around a while? I recognize, so this is in partnership, they’re going to be testing this process at the National Carbon Capture Center, which I am familiar with, which is a great resource for up and coming companies that are wanting to develop or test out products.
But there are a couple of these different test facilities, and that’s actually part of the DOE’s umbrella in the sense is creating access to these type of testing sites. So I’m not sure how the application process worked for this, but maybe as part of the grant, they were able to say, hey, you know, you can come and test it at the National Carbon Capture Center. That’s cool.
Ross Kenyon: And then also a similar thing is happening with the Gas Technology Institute from Des Plains, Illinois.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, and that one looks like is at the Wyoming Integrated Test Center.
Ross Kenyon: That’s another big grant here, more than $16 million, including both DOE and non-DOE funding.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, really. So I definitely, I’m more grounded in the direct air capture stuff. I mean, at least for me, that’s, that’s easier to understand because so much of it are, I mean, it’s these, you know, 800 to two and a half million dollar grants. Whereas a lot of these projects are, um, I mean, you know, up to, up to $13 million for one of these projects. Um, those are, those are much bigger operations.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. It’s interesting to know because I also, I recognize some of the names in this entire list, but there’s much that is happening that I do not feel as well plugged into despite being well positioned to know to sort of have like a Sauron’s eye view of the entire sector. And so on the one hand, that can be a little frightening. You’re like, oh, there’s stuff happening. This is a news program. I don’t fully know all the implications and players. On the other hand, I’m really glad because I don’t want it to just be like a number of people who can fit inside of a bar.
Right.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. This industry is very recently and quickly grown beyond what any one brain can Can hang on to. And so I think that’s what’s nice about, you know, reading through this with you and kind of giving giving a flip on and I think it’s because it’s, you know, it’s, it’s kind of, it can, it can feel like pressure. I know in the Air Miners events, sometimes we get people asking lots of questions, but sometimes people are kind of quiet and it’s like, you know, it can be intimidating to say, oh yeah, I’ve never heard of this one.
But like, I’m curious about it. Does it, does it relate to something else I know? I think I said this already, but this DOE funding and program, I didn’t hear about this when it originally launched, in the sense that they’re asking for applications and stuff, did not come up on my radar until now, when they’ve granted these This next chunk is $22 million overall that went into direct air capture. Compared to some of the previous projects that were $13 million, that’s only maybe two of those projects, but to me this is more meaningful for direct air capture in particular.
Just because so many of these projects for a million dollars, you’re able to make a lot of early progress on R&D and testing out an idea. It’s not enough to really build out necessarily a production plant or something that you can really pull all the numbers from. But this definitely moves things forward in terms of designing, developing, and planning.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that makes sense. And I guess if you’re tracking direct air capture much more closely than some of these other subfields, whatever you want to call them, this next section is for direct air capture. So let’s dive into there. Are you into FOA 2188?
Tito Jankowski: That’s right. And the first one up is ElectroCore, which actually came up on the previous list under a different process. So basically, it sounds like they’ve received two grants from the DOE. And this one, they’re building out a 30 kilogram a day direct air capture system. Combining Climeworks’ process and Svante’s process. I’m curious, there was a press release a couple months ago where Climeworks and Svante were working together. I’m wondering if ElectroCore was kind of a Joint venture or something that emerged from that. Or maybe it’s something different where they’ve licensed technology from Climeworks and Svante independently.
But yeah, they got two and a half million dollars to build that out along. Let me see, what was the first amount that they got? Yes, they also got a million and a half dollars for up above that LH CO2 Met Colorado project that we mentioned earlier that was also using Svante technology. So clearly there’s something along with Electric Core and Savante.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I need to look further into that too. It’s definitely caught my eye. And here you have GE Research out of New York. What are they up to? Another sorbent-based DAC project.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, this one’s pretty thin on details. I mean, it’s got an overall description that’s integrating a metal organic framework and a sorbent binder slurry coating to capture and release atmospheric carbon dioxide. I’m fairly sure GE research is the GE, which means they’ve gotten $800,000 from DOE to research this new sorbent system. So that sounds good to me.
Ross Kenyon: Another sorbent project below that is the Georgia Tech Research Corporation. It looks like they’re also working with sorbents.
Tito Jankowski: That’s cool. Yeah, another one that they get another $800,000 grant. This is great. I mean, to me, in the sense that, like, to date, there’s a handful of director capture companies. And if you look specifically in the United States, it’s a small handful. And this, you know, there’s, I think it’s 10 companies here, 18 projects that are, you know, getting a serious boost in terms of developing director capture systems. So I think this type of thing that Uh, you know, today we can look at $22 million and say, gosh, that doesn’t, you know, that, that seems like a lot for the, for the industry.
Um, but I think this is just really carving out the path. That’s like, yeah, well, next year it’s going to be two times that or 10 times that. Um, and then the year after that, it’s going to be more than that. So, um, these are, these are big numbers for now, but you know, I think a year from now, these will be, uh, kind of table stakes.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, we’ll be, we’ll be trying to track that. Well, okay, this next one, though, we certainly know. That’s Global Thermostat. We’re here at Global Thermostat Operations, LLC out of New York City. So, yeah, they got close to $3. 5 million all in. And, yeah, what’s been going on with them? I guess I haven’t kept up nearly as well as I probably should.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, this description is pretty thin on details. It sounds like they’re refining their process and their equipment to build out their direct their capture system. This grant did, you know, it’s two and a half million dollars, so it’s I’m not clear on what the difference is there. It seems like there’s kind of two tiers in these grants. Some are $800,000 and others are two and a half. But it sounds like in that sense, Global Thermostat qualified for obviously something that’s a bit later stage than the first three projects that we talked about here that seem really Or rather, the GE Research and the Georgia Tech project, which both seemed pretty scientific and very research in nature.
I think that these two and a half million dollar grants like Global Thermos Tech are more for development and refining a process.
Ross Kenyon: Okay. This next one caught my eye. Close to a million for Harvard. They have, I’m sure people listening know about the moisture swing. A set of tech for direct air capture, but this is an alkalinity swing based on pH. Are you familiar with this? This is the first I’ve heard about this. It’s pretty neat sounding.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, I was asking around on Air Miners about like, hey, who knows what’s going on at Harvard with this alkalinity swing? Didn’t come up, haven’t figured out who’s doing it, but it’s either going to be like some super familiar name and it’s just like, oh yeah, they have somebody at the, you know, in their lab that’s working on this, or maybe it’s somebody new. This is definitely like in terms of the ones that I’m reaching my eye on, this one will be like, oh yeah, who’s that at Harvard making it happen?
$800,000.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s very neat. Okay, and the next one sort of play on words here in a sense LLC. Cool. So they’re working on some sort of membrane DAC approach.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, again, it’s a company that I don’t think I’m familiar with. The name sounds like a little bit familiar, but yeah, again, $800,000 to develop a, or rather to test out and develop a new polymer membrane for direct air capture. This is, one thing I’ve been curious about with direct air capture is kind of what’s the potential for kind of existing innovation and technology and patents to be applied to direct air capture? Certainly, there’s an opportunity to invent new things, but I just think that the challenge of direct air capture is something that there’s probably a basket of technologies that have been invented and have been created, but simply They weren’t created for director capture.
They weren’t created even potentially even for carbon capture. And I wonder if any of these are kind of fitting in there where it’s like something that was developed for another application and it’s being repurposed. And again, nothing about this company in particular makes me think of that, but just in a sense of like, yeah, you know, I wonder what the origin of some of these technologies are in the case, like in a sense, it’s something that spun out of Caltech or UCLA or, you know, a company or a university, or is it something they’ve invented themselves?
But either way, you know, $800,000 to help develop it out.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I do like in reviewing all these options, the wideness of this, too. It doesn’t seem like DOE is interested in one particular approach, but it does seem quite broad. Even within DAC, there’s alkalinity swings and membranes and sorbents, and it seems like they’re trying to just get a really diverse portfolio here.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, and again, it’s 18 companies that are funded. I think that, you know, if you just came into Director Capture today and you read this press release and you went and Got a very deep understanding of each of these companies. In my sense, you would be set for what the current state of play in direct air capture is. You can just take this one press release, get to know it really thoroughly, and you would potentially know more than pretty much anybody else that’s thinking about or working on direct air capture.
Ross Kenyon: I think that may be the case. Then this next one here, InnoSepra LLC out of New Jersey. What are they working on, Tito?
Tito Jankowski: So this is kind of leading up to that and saying they’re optimizing previously identified transformational materials. So this is a specific example where they’re taking existing materials and they’re working on testing them to see, yeah, how does this perform in, you know, In a carbon capture system. So I think that’s, that’s a really promising angle. So in this case, they’re saying they’re using computational tools and lab skill testing. But I mean, I guess, imagine, you know, taking this, this repository, this dictionary of materials that they’re going to start with, and they’re going to say, okay, let’s, let’s throw this all at director capture and see what sticks.
Ross Kenyon: Okay. And here we have one IWVC LLC, and this is a combined water and CO2 DAC system. Are you familiar with the basics of how something like that works?
Tito Jankowski: No, it’s a new concept for me, combined water and DAC. So it’s working to capture carbon dioxide and water from the air. My connection to capturing water from the air comes from the, I think it’s the water XPRIZE. It’s probably a fancier name than that.
Ross Kenyon: It’s not Tatooine or what?
Tito Jankowski: What’s that?
Ross Kenyon: It’s not from Tatooine, the moisture part.
Tito Jankowski: That’s right, yes. So I’m most familiar with water capture through the XPRIZE. I think it’s the XPRIZE, the water XPRIZE. They probably have a better name than that, but it was these... One of the emergent projects was how to capture carbon dioxide or how to capture water from thin air. I remember hearing about one of these water capture systems that was at the end of a really hard hike where they couldn’t get a water fountain up there, but they said, hey, let’s install one of these water from air systems and then there’ll be a water fountain.
I’m not sure what the benefit of grabbing onto water and carbon dioxide is. But hey, maybe it’s something that hasn’t been overlooked.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’d be curious to learn more too. This next one here is from the Palo Alto Research Center. What is going on in here? Another Sorbin approach.
Tito Jankowski: So that’s Xerox PARC. I got to visit them a couple months ago before this whole COVID thing broke out. They’re really cool. They have a lot of history in the computing world. So if you recall, Xerox PARC was It was basically the originator of the modern graphical user interface, graphic user interface. And that’s where Apple and Microsoft kind of took their quote unquote inspiration from. I believe in Apple’s case, they actually made licensed technology from Xerox PARC in order to create their operating system. But yeah, now Palo Alto Research Center is doing I’m doing a lot of stuff on carbon capture, carbon removal, and other things.
There’s a cloud brightening project that’s going on there. But in this case, they are creating a sorbent for direct air capture. And again, this is a very scientific Scientific type project. So they’re working to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere using this solid sorbents. And they have these metrics there that aren’t actually very meaningful to me, but oxidation resistance is seven times greater than the state the art polyethylamine. So if those numbers mean anything to you, hit me up. I’d love to hear about how this fits together. They’ve got uptake capacity, uptake rate, and oxidation resistance.
Potentially something that I would rewatch Jennifer Wilcox’s deep dive on Director of Capture that was on the Airminers YouTube channel to see if these things connect.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, her deep dives are very valuable. If you’ve not heard her on the Reversing Climate Change podcast or her presentation for air miners, they are well worth your time. Okay, so then this next one, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute out of New York. I might have said that wrong. Looks like another sorbent. So it looks like a lot of people feeling quite sorbent heavy as we’re going through this.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, this is over at RPI. And so they are, yeah, if you’ve got a new sorbent structure, then they’re gonna test it out and it’s gonna cost about $800,000. I mean, that’s, you know, overall, I feel like this is, you know, there’s a theme here, which is developing or even testing one of these new sorbents or one of these new candidates is something that takes about a million dollars to start making progress on. It’s something that I’ve been challenged by looking through Silicon Valley, looking through technology more broadly. And again, so much of this stuff comes back to somebody, either a university or a private research institute like Xerox PARC or RPI.
That’s where a lot of this stuff has come from. It’s possible there’s innovation that’s going to come out of garages and classrooms, but so much of this stuff comes from universities, institutes, and private R&D groups.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it’s pretty clear to see that. There’s a good mix of both public and private and intriguing to see how research is actually funded and works in the diversity and also where they cluster, too. Just wrapping your head around this document and seeing what has been funded is definitely a good way to wrap your head around this sector as a whole. At least this basket of solutions you could say. Okay Tito, RTI International. So this metal organic frameworks and phosphorus dendromers. Yeah, I feel a little bit stupid reading some of these because I am not a scientist or a technologist in this kind of way.
What is happening in here?
Tito Jankowski: I mean, at a high level, it’s the same thing we’ve been talking about. They’re developing these new novel materials. Metal organic frameworks are increasingly kind of experimented or looked to as a way to pull carbon dioxide from ambient air. I know I’m blanking on their name at the moment. Too many companies in my head. But there’s, there’s some definitely up and coming director capture companies that are that are using metal organic frameworks. And so this is another, you know, they’re working on developing another option. And it looks like I got funding to develop too.
So doing metal organic frameworks and these phosphorus dendromers, which I’m not, not familiar with that term.
Ross Kenyon: Okay. The next we have the Southern States Energy Board. My Lord, there are a lot of these, by the way.
Tito Jankowski: They’re still 18.
Ross Kenyon: There’s a lot to go through. Southern States Energy Board at the Peachtree Corners, Georgia. What is happening here?
Tito Jankowski: This project I heard was a collaboration between a couple different organizations that came from Bob Wilson at Air Capture. He was talking on Air Miners about some of the details behind this because their company is in partnership with the Southern States Energy Board on this project. So two and a half million dollars. Spread over this collaborative project. It’s possible that a lot of these projects are bigger collaborations between teams, but at least in this case, hearing from Bob, it was cool to hear that, okay, so there’s a bunch of organizations coming together to shepherd along this $2.
5 million towards testing materials.
Ross Kenyon: Wouldn’t surprise me. I know many groups will team up on applications like this and try and collaborate and certainly gets a lot more brain power on it and legitimacy with having buy-in from so many different groups. So it wouldn’t surprise me if that happened for a lot of these.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, same with the next one. SUNY in collaboration with University of Buffalo and Trimerick Corporation. They are developing something called an inorganic nano cage for temperature swing carbon capture. There’s a lot of terms in this one. I don’t mind. It sounds cool. So this one is self-assembled inorganic nano cages for rapid temperature swing absorption using electricity-free solar heating and radiative cooling. Again, for $800,000 going to a science A science project and getting data, getting this techno-economic analysis that they’re planning. That all sounds great to me. This is exactly the type of stuff that, yeah, I mean, I would love to see this sooner, but it’s nice to see that, okay, DOE is funding so many projects like this where they’re They’re taking a stab at something that’s pretty promising as a way to improve director capture systems.
And each one of these things could potentially turn into the next Climeworks or even multiple. I mean, it’s possible that one of these These 18 projects could create 18 more startups or if you double it or triple it, you’re talking about 50 companies that may come out of this when currently the space is around 10 if you’re generous.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it would be great to see it expand some more. Okay, here we have another, looks like a corporation, Sustion Inc. , or Sustion Inc. , I’m not familiar with them either. Are you?
Tito Jankowski: No, again, I am just fascinated with all these new names and new companies that are coming out because of this project.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it looks like it’s another sorbent process here and integrating it with waste heat with some sort of other manufacturing process.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, this one catches my attention because they’re doing 80 to 90 degrees centigrade for their deabsorption step. And my understanding is that’s much lower than normal, which is great.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, all in funding there, close to a million. And then, okay, we have a bunch of universities coming up. So there’s a little remaining projects. This is alphabetical. So we’re in the U’s now, Tito, or very nearly.
Tito Jankowski: Correct.
Unknown speaker: What’s that? Great. Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: The trustees of Columbia University in the city of New York. They are, what are they doing? Yeah, this is another one with a lot of terms in here that is quite technical.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, same thing. They’re investigating their absorption kinetics. It’s very basic research stuff, which is so, so, so needed. This is the type of stuff that I mean, I can try it in a garage. There’s certainly meaningful innovation that can come out from garages and bedrooms and private small research labs. But in this case, this is Columbia University. This is where this type of research, it should definitely be happening in our research institutions. And now it is.
Ross Kenyon: It definitely is. Yeah, it looks like the University of Akron in Ohio, they’re also Doing something in collaboration here with Aspen Aerogels Inc. So another type of swing process.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, this one, you know, compared to some of the last ones is pretty thin on details. I’m not familiar with Aspen Aerogels. But it just says, you know, this could help alleviate the impact of carbon dioxide emissions. I would be curious, you know, With the Stripe program, it makes me think of the Stripe program where they published all the applications. I really like that. Everybody who applied to be a part of the Stripe Carbon Rule program, those applications were all published on GitHub. I’d be curious to see these applications for these companies and even the ones that ultimately weren’t accepted.
Just to see what works, what doesn’t, what’s getting traction and how could the companies that didn’t get accepted, how could they improve?
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I wonder what that would be like or if it would discourage anyone from applying. Nori is pretty open source and we intellectually, ideologically, were bought into the open source ethos. And we don’t mind people reading our application. We do podcasts that will say, here are the things that we screwed up in the last six months or a year. Here are the wrong turns that we made. And we’re fine being humble and learning and learning in public in that kind of way. I don’t think that is the dominant corporate model.
So do you think that would actually happen or would it turn some of these groups that applied off?
Tito Jankowski: With DOE, I imagine they probably wouldn’t get there. Just some metrics in terms of how many companies applied, how much funding was requested. What’s the appetite for funding here? Were there hundreds of companies that applied? Because again, I’m surprised that of the companies that got this, 18 companies, most of them weren’t on my radar at all. It does make me wonder though, some of the more familiar names, obviously Global Thermostat was there. And Climeworks came up through kind of this subsidiary or partnership thing. But it’d be interesting to see more familiar names.
Again, it’s possible that these are under just different names or something. But yeah, I doubt DOE would do something like that where they demand the applications be open and shared. But yeah, I think that this came up during the LCA event this morning where it was like, It’s important to be transparent when things kind of suck because that way we all know like, yeah, this stuff needs to get a lot, lot, lot better. And if we kind of brush it behind a curtain or under the rug and act like, oh yeah, it’s really good.
I think that the whole industry loses out. So the more transparent, the more open we can be about where these technologies are at, I think the faster we’ll be able to identify winners and test out new candidates.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, maybe so. How should I approach it? Did you ever watch Deadwood?
Tito Jankowski: No.
Ross Kenyon: Anyway, so like the first season or two is they’re all pioneers and they’re all sort of like small business people. And then as the seasons go on, the West is pretty much settled. And then the big like railroad companies and big like mining interests come to town. And it changes from being this sort of small proprietorship model to having really big players and the players are powerful and push people around in new ways. So I think we’re definitely still in the early stages of the Deadwood model, I think you could say.
Tito Jankowski: That’s right. Yeah, that’s something we talk about a lot with air miners is helping people that know of each other get to know each other because we have this short window of opportunity where everybody’s pretty accessible. I think the CEOs and the I think five years from now, if we leave that up to just kind of organic growth, I think those people will be a lot less accessible and those lessons and partnerships they can offer will be less accessible. So now is a very unique time to help get people connected together As a function to increase the plant’s ability, humanity’s ability to pull carbon dioxide from ambient air.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s really the goal. I should clarify too, I know that Deadwood example is framed and the show itself is framed in a sort of anti-big, anti-corporate kind of way, but I do think that sort of knee-jerk interpretation of events It is probably not the whole story, and we do need buy-in from very large companies to move this needle very quickly. So it’s a tough line to walk, but I love the model of air miners too. That’s a great way to center it, where it is very collaborative and open, and we’re all sort of peers.
Even on paper, it might look like we are competitors. That is really not what we’re trying to do. At least I hope that’s the case, Tito.
Tito Jankowski: Sure, yeah. Yeah, and I’ve just seen over and over that In my work, there’s just been so much around, you know, it’s easy to think that secrecy is kind of this magic bullet, that if it’s secret, then you’ll be able to do your thing or succeed at it. But, oh my gosh, especially being in Silicon Valley, I’ve just seen the, sure, there are potentially costs to openness, but I think that overall it’s the It’s the winning strategy and you see that from small hacker groups or people working on new projects.
Always somebody like Tesla is open sourcing their patent portfolio around battery technology. It’s the way to create great things.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I love that. You see it in the space too. Project Vesta is very much committed to the open source ethos as well and I really respect that and like that about them. Okay, I think we’re getting a little far afield, which is my fault, Tito. I’m sorry, I’m gonna steer us back on here. University of Delaware, they have another one that hurts my brain a little bit. I need you to teach me.
Tito Jankowski: All of this seems new to me. Electrochemically driven CO2 separator using ionomers. So they’re doing continuous carbon dioxide separation, and they’re characterizing the kinetics, thermodynamics, and transport properties of carbon dioxide. So again, like a very basic research project that’s super needed, and they’re getting $800,000 to try and make this new ambient capture system.
Ross Kenyon: Cool. That’s for a million dollars total, $800,000 of which is from the DOE. And it looks like the very last one, yeah, is the University of Kentucky Research Foundation. An enhanced depolarized electromembrane system.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, this one is working to pull carbon dioxide from the air and then concentrate it, you know, using a solvent that they can use and renew. And yeah, nothing here that super stands out like some of the last ones, but clearly in their application, they’ve presented something that was deemed worth, in this case, $700,000 of grant funding. I mean, that’s the other thing to kind of closing us out is like when I think about university research budgets compared to say startups or things like that, I mean, a university lab, you get $700,000.
Let’s say you get a million dollars, 20% of it goes to the university for all the overhead stuff. Then you need to run the lab, you need to do all this other stuff. So a million dollar grant for a PI, That’s part of their job, that’s part of the trade. So I think that this is in line with what’s needed for developing and characterizing and studying these technology options. That’s at the million dollar level. There were certainly a bunch of two and a half million dollar projects. Those were more like global thermostat that came up at the beginning.
Those are more like systems design, building out a pilot process, whereas more of the million-dollar grants seem to be scientific research characterization of a molecule or chemistry. So yeah, it’s great to see. I mean, again, each one of these things, if it works, could be the foundation for the next great direct air capture company or companies.
Ross Kenyon: I think so. And congratulations to the winners of these grants. It’s a big deal. And if we haven’t met, I hope we do at some point, I’m happy. There’s so much brain power that we don’t know personally. It’s really exciting to see. I know you feel the same way.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, totally. If anybody wants to go through and plug these into the Air Miners Index, that would be cool. They’ll probably do it one evening. There’s just so much here of these 18 companies. I would guess, gosh, 15 of them I hadn’t heard of before. There’s just so much new stuff going on.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, really, really fast. I imagine many of them are just in stealth or they’re just plugged into sort of this university research or private research system, which I imagine they’re a conservative and probably not a loose-lipped set of organizations here. Actually, I have no idea. That’s just speculation. I have no idea how those things. Science works at universities. This is not a strength of mine. So maybe that’s the case. Maybe not. I don’t know. What do you think?
Tito Jankowski: Oh, I mean, I think universities are pretty good at being transparent and having discussions. And each of these things reads as if a graduate student or maybe a PI said, oh yeah, I had this idea or had this concept. Maybe it’s related to something else going on in their lab that they’re applying beyond carbon dioxide or some other topic. When you feel like the covers on a lot of these projects, my guess is, or at least what I’ve seen before is, these aren’t coming from carbon capture research labs or people that are really tuned into just carbon capture stuff.
These are coming from labs that are You know, developing technologies, sorbents, materials for a wide range of uses. These are the world’s materials experts. And because of this funding, they’re able to bring that expertise to direct or capture, which is why, you know, again, it’s a major issue. It’s got major potential for direct air capture is these labs. Otherwise, they’d be working on other materials. They’d be working on other concepts, but they’ve been able to turn their focus towards direct air capture in this case.
Ross Kenyon: Cool. Thanks for that summation there, Tito, and giving us some analysis to take home with us. Anything else we should say? Or I think that’s a pretty good place to leave it.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, let’s see when the DOE announces their next call for projects like this. Looking forward to whenever that happens.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, me too. Well, thanks for being here, Tito. Your various affiliations and social media accounts are posted in the show notes. Thanks for coming and hanging out again.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, great hanging with you.
Unknown speaker: I’m also glad we didn’t have multiple people because otherwise this would have taken many times as long, I think. Yeah, it worked. It worked great. It worked.
Ross Kenyon: The Tito exclusive model. Yeah. It works, listeners. Okay. Well, thank you so much for listening. If you like what we’re doing here, please rate and review us on iTunes, Apple Podcasts. Tell your friends. And thanks so much for listening.
