On August 12, XPRIZE Carbon Removal hosted its second team matchmaking webinar. Nine exciting teams working on everything from ocean alkalinization, algae farming, biochar production, and carbon negative building materials signed up to pitch a 2-minute overview of their carbon removal solutions and the specific skill sets they are looking to recruit on their team.
These teams are looking for talented individuals across engineering, plant genetics, marketing, CSR investments, building materials, legal, fishing, farming, finance, construction, and more. We always encourage teams to get in touch with one another, share resources and talent if it makes sense for you. If you’re interested in getting in touch with any of these teams, you can reach out using the name and contact information provided below. Check out the recap below or watch the full recording here.
Team Envirohome
Team Envirohome plans to use NaOH to alkalinize parts of coral beach while monitoring results with argonite. This project would take the work of Dr. Rebecca Albright at the California Academy of Sciences (Nature,Vol 531. 17 March 2016) to the next level of offshore alkalization of the ocean with NaOH with the incoming tide across coral reefs with the measurement of calcification induced and CO2 removal while measuring the health of the reef. This could be scaled up by the use of multiple small ships off shore to multiple reefs. The health of the corals would be improved and they could sequester hopefully gigatons of CO2 into calcium carbonates.
William Fears
Advanced Renewable Technology International Inc, ARTi, provides advanced pyrolysis systems. ARTi has a robust team with many years of experience and specialization in turnkey solutions for communities in the world. They develop complete systems for biochar production and start with research and development of the biomass including laboratory and techno-economic analysis. ARTI’s biochar provides a stable form of carbon that has amazing benefits for soils and stores carbon dioxide. ARTi’s efficient, cutting-edge pyrolysis process is able to lock the carbon dioxide that plants sequester through photosynthesis. Biochar is able to stably store carbon, lock it into the ground and remove it from the atmosphere for hundreds of years.
Lissette Cordova
Team Atmoo
Team Atmoo farms algae at the sea through photosynthesis, using CO2 dissolved in the water for growing .30 hectares of sea planted with algae that can extract 1000 tons per year of CO2. Once grown, the algae are collected, dehydrated ,treated for protein extraction and later transformed into bioplastic through a bacterial process.
Beatriz Castelar
We are using slow pyrolysis reactors to process agricultural, forestry and municipal waste biomass. Our current reactor can sequester 20,000 tons of CO2 to biochar per year and we plan to build many more!
Anthony Tatum
The HONU Carbon Removal system will harvest carbon from sea water, repurpose it for long-term storage, and deliver it to secondary users.
Jonah Heller
Team RepAir has been developing a unique solution for CO2 capture, based on an electrochemical technology. Team RepAir’s mission is to capture CO2 from the air at Gigaton scale using their unique, ultra-low-cost solution. Inspired by battery and fuel cell principles, RepAir's electrochemical device utilizes electricity to separate CO2 from the air. Continuously processing around ambient temperature, their modular and scalable technology can reach Gigaton scale. The RepAir solution requires 50% less energy compared to state-of-the-art carbon capture technologies and lower CAPEX.
Amir Shiner
Team Shadokx
Team Shadokx wants to remove carbon from the atmosphere and produce the fuels we need for space expansion through the The Gas Space Station. Transposing the oil and gas model to space. Made of a Space Needle and a Space Raffinery, it will suck out the air from the atmosphere to separate and concentrate the components to produce fuels. Stored in tanks, they will be available directly at the GSS or sent where needed to fuel spaceships and other activities. Reverse, the GSS can send gases in the atmosphere. Applications of this technology would produce fuels for spaceships, atmospheric decarbonation (Earth), terraforming (Mars), and gas extraction (Jupiter).
Alexandre Pecourt
Using the original carbon processor, Team Groundproof creates ancillary building products from cyanobacteria.
Derrik Parent
Team SCAR
Team SCAR aims to capture carbon using sound waves. This technology does not utilize new sophisticated expensive tech, increases the rate of capture, produces an Increased amount of capture, not energy intensive, and overall has low setup cost and low cost for capturing carbon. They are currently in the prototyping phase.
Swati Bhardwaj
Team Mad Matts Motors runs CO2 through microwave plasma and captures it on the other side where it is filtered, condensed, and compressed to be pumped deep into the Earth.
Matthew Herrington