![]() “This was an academic breakthrough,” says Brian Baynes PhD ’04, CEO and co-founder of Verdox. Climate change science suggests that removing CO 2 directly from air “is an important component of the whole mitigation strategy,” he adds. “We showed that our technology works in a wide range of CO 2 concentrations, from the 20 percent or higher found in cement and steel industry exhaust streams, down to the very diffuse 0.04 percent in air itself,” says Hatton. Once the battery becomes saturated, the CO 2 can be released with a flip of voltage as a pure gas stream. When activated by a low-level electrical current, the battery charges, reacting with passing molecules of CO 2 and pulling them onto its surface. ![]() Their invention is a kind of battery: conductive electrodes coated with a compound called polyanthraquinone, which has a natural chemical attraction to carbon dioxide under certain conditions, and no affinity for CO 2 when these conditions are relaxed. Voskian and Hatton came up with a design whose electrochemistry makes carbon capture appear nearly effortless. “This recognition enhances the credibility of what we’re doing, and really validates our approach.”Īt the heart of this approach is technology Voskian describes as “elegant and efficient.” Most attempts to grab carbon from an exhaust flow or from air itself require a great deal of energy. “It feels exciting to see ideas move from the lab to potential commercial production,” says Hatton, a co-founder of the company and scientific advisor, adding that Verdox has speedily overcome the initial technical hiccups encountered by many early phase companies. Alan Hatton, the Ralph Landau Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. Voskian began developing the company’s cost-effective and scalable technology for carbon capture in the lab of T. Alternative energies will only get humankind so far, and a vast removal of CO 2 will be an important tool in the race to remove the gas from the atmosphere. The search for viable carbon capture technologies has intensified in recent years, as scientific models show with increasing certainty that any hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change means limiting CO 2 concentrations below 450 parts per million by 2100. ![]() “It shows that the path we’ve chosen is the right one.” “While our core technology has been validated by the significant improvement of performance metrics, this external recognition further verifies our vision,” says Sahag Voskian SM ’15, PhD ’19, co-founder and chief technology officer at Verdox. This was the first round in the Musk Foundation’s four-year, $100 million-competition, the largest prize offered in history. Then, in April - after recognition as one of the year’s top energy pioneers by Bloomberg New Energy Finance - the company and partner Carbfix won a $1 million XPRIZE Carbon Removal milestone award. The carbon capture and removal startup, launched in 2019, announced $80 million in funding in February from a group of investors that included Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures. By most measures, MIT chemical engineering spinoff Verdox has been enjoying an exceptional year.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |