Water based Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) technology – Chat with CarbonBlue co-founder Dan Deviri
Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) encompasses various strategies and technologies aimed at extracting CO2 from the atmosphere and securely storing it. This process is crucial for addressing climate change, as it aids in offsetting emissions from sources that are challenging to eliminate completely. The approaches include both natural methods, such as reforestation, and technological solutions like direct air capture.
Water-Based CDR specifically involves techniques that leverage aquatic environments to capture and store carbon dioxide.
We had a chat with Dr. Dan Deviri, co-founder and CEO of CarbonBlue, a promising climate-tech startup based in Israel, focused on water-based carbon dioxide removal technology.
Dr. Dan holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science and has degrees in Chemistry and Biology. In 2022, he co-founded CarbonBlue with Iddo Tsur, who currently serves as the company’s COO. Their goal is to develop a high-impact technology capable of decarbonizing industrial activities globally as part of the fight against climate change. The company’s large-scale pilot facility is set to begin operations in the first half of 2025.
Could you briefly explain CarbonBlue’s carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technology and how it differs from other CDR technologies currently available in the market?
Yes, of course. Before I explain how we distinguish ourselves from other CDR technologies, let’s briefly discuss what we perceive as the real challenge in carbon dioxide removal (CDR). According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in order to avoid the worst outcomes of climate change, we will need to reach a scale of 10 billion tons of CO2 removal per year by mid-century—less than 30 years from now. Now, 10 billion tons is just a number for most listeners, but to put it in perspective, it’s more than the amount of most things we produce. For example, crude oil production is around 4 billion tons per year, cement—which is used to build our homes—also accounts for 4 billion tons, and steel—an essential material for manufacturing—accounts for 2 billion tons annually. So, if you add up steel, cement, and oil, you get an idea of the scale of CDR we’ll need each year.
The challenge isn’t just capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That’s relatively simple—we can plant trees, for instance. But we need to find scalable technologies that can reach the gigaton level within 30 years. If we can’t do that, the effort won’t be enough. That’s the challenge we focused on when developing our technology.
To meet that challenge, we target water. Why water? First, because water holds most of the CO2 in the carbon cycle. When we emit a molecule of CO2, it spends the majority of its life—more than 90%, actually 98%—in the oceans. That makes water a prime target. The concentration of CO2 in water is higher than in the atmosphere. If you look at a liter of seawater, there are 140 times more CO2 molecules than in the air. Additionally, there is already a lot of infrastructure in place to manage water, which gives us a foundation to build on.
Our philosophy is to remove CO2 from water in a way that allows the water to reabsorb CO2 from the atmosphere, like a sponge, leading to a net removal of CO2 from the air. We aim to do this by using water as the medium and leveraging existing infrastructure. This approach helps us keep costs down and significantly reduces the size of the facilities needed for CO2 removal, which is crucial. For example, the largest CDR facility being built in the U.S. today will have a capacity of 1 million tons per year and is about the size of the Vatican. It’s enormous, and we can’t build tens of thousands of such facilities around the world. So we focus on flexibility.
We developed a reactor that can remove CO2 from water and integrate it into existing water-processing facilities, such as desalination plants, wastewater treatment plants, agricultural systems, and aquaculture—basically, any facility that moves water. It doesn’t matter if it’s seawater, freshwater, or anything in between.
From a scientific perspective, our technology is quite different. It’s based on two steps. In the first step, we mineralize the dissolved CO2 in the water into a carbonate mineral by adding lime. We then remove this carbonate mineral from the water. It’s solid, easy to handle, store, and transport. We can then take it to a site where we reverse the process, extracting CO2 from the mineral and regenerating the lime for further use. The CO2 we extract can be either utilized or sequestered to achieve carbon removal.
What sets us apart is that we don’t use electrochemistry, unlike most of our competitors working with water-based solutions. Electrochemistry requires conductive water, meaning the water must contain salt. We are not limited by the salt levels in water, so we can operate on any type of water. Additionally, since we store CO2 in a mineralized form, we have more flexibility in deployment and energy use. We can capture CO2 100% of the time to maximize infrastructure use, while the energy-intensive regeneration process can be done intermittently, only when renewable energy is available. This addresses the intermittency problem of renewables, as they are not always available 24/7.
Apart from offsetting carbon footprints, what are some of the economic use cases for businesses and industries to install your CDR technology on their premises? Additionally, which types of industries do you think are best suited to benefit from your solution?
To provide business incentives for industries to adopt our CDR technology, we focus on two key components of our system. First, there’s the water-facing technology that removes carbon dioxide from the water, and second, there’s the part that deals with gaseous CO2, which liberates CO2 from its mineral form and generates lime.
While capturing and sequestering CO2 can earn carbon credits in voluntary markets, that’s just an additional benefit. The core value of our technology lies in its economic benefits across different industries. For instance, in desalination, removing CO2 from water before the desalination process can reduce costs by up to 10%. Given that desalination often has very slim margins, this reduction can significantly improve profitability. Water is extensively used in industry and contains not just H2O but also other molecules like calcium and carbon dioxide. When these molecules combine, they form lime scale—a white or brownish residue commonly found in kettles, for example. This residue is a significant issue both in industrial settings and domestic use, such as in kettles and boilers.
One universal benefit of removing CO2 from water is that it softens the water, thereby eliminating lime scale. This reduction in scale leads to lower maintenance costs for any equipment that comes into contact with the water, whether in industrial settings or in domestic appliances. While the extent of benefit can vary depending on the industry, this is a widespread advantage applicable to many sectors.
Similarly, the gaseous CO2 side of our technology offers economic advantages. Many industries require a consistent, local supply of CO2, and having a reliable source can be a major business incentive. Our technology can thus be applied across a range of industries including desalination, aquaculture, power production, and even traditional sectors like cement, pulp and paper, and oil and gas.
By addressing both the water and CO2 aspects, we create economic value beyond just carbon removal. Managing the supply chain effectively means we don’t need specialized transport for CO2, which is a unique advantage. This approach supports the growth of both the CDR industry and the emerging circular carbon economy.
So, if the CO2 is generated on-site, it means you save on the logistics costs associated with procuring CO2 from external sources and transporting it.
Yes, absolutely. Most of the CO2 available for industrial purposes comes with a complex supply chain. For example, there’s an interesting anecdote involving Coca-Cola in the United States. In the U.S., much of the CO2 supply comes from carbon capture at ethanol fermentation facilities. Since about 5 to 10% of gasoline in the U.S. is blended with ethanol, ethanol production results in significant CO2 emissions, which are relatively easy to capture and sell.
During the COVID lockdowns, gasoline consumption plummeted as people stopped driving, which caused a drop in demand for ethanol. As ethanol production slowed down, the byproduct—CO2—also became scarce. This led to a shortage of CO2 for Coca-Cola facilities, and as a result, people couldn’t buy Coca-Cola because there wasn’t enough CO2 for production.
This example highlights how complex the CO2 industry can be. If you’re located near an ethanol fermentation plant, CO2 is relatively cheap and readily available. However, if you’re in an island nation without access to ethanol plants, ammonia plants, or natural gas refineries, the price of CO2 can soar to hundreds of dollars per ton—sometimes even higher than the value of a carbon credit.
In such cases, generating CO2 sustainably from the environment, without adding to overall emissions, can be a valuable business proposition.
You also mentioned circularity—can you explain how your solution contributes to the circular economy? Specifically, in terms of deployment at various premises, is the infrastructure you use portable and reusable, or does each new project require creating new infrastructure?
It’s potentially feasible, but it depends on the scale. For large facilities, such as power plants with massive water usage—like solar or nuclear power plants—where we’re dealing with hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of water per hour, it’s unlikely that we could provide portable equipment due to the sheer size and complexity.
However, for smaller industrial setups, we can provide mineralization equipment in a more portable form, such as plug-and-play containers. These units can be connected to existing water infrastructure. At the end of their lifecycle, there’s no reason why the mineralization units couldn’t be recycled, barring maintenance and natural wear and tear, which typically occurs over a long period. So, at a smaller scale, portability is definitely possible.
Can you shed some light on the feasibility assessment for deploying CDR technology. What are the main prerequisites and operational challenges that you evaluate for a particular project?
The main prerequisite for deploying our CDR technology is that the water should contain carbon dioxide. While we haven’t encountered any water that lacks CO2, the concentration can sometimes be relatively low, making it less desirable and reducing the incentives for deploying the technology.
Additionally, the amount of water and the core benefits created by deploying the technology are major factors. We prefer to deploy in industries where the incentives are stronger, such as in desalination plants, where there is significant cost reduction.
Community support is also crucial. We want to avoid deploying in areas where the community is opposed to it, as any industrial or reactor-like infrastructure can be controversial. Community acceptance is an important consideration for us in any deployment.
What could be the reasons a community might not support such a project? Is it due to the additional land required for setting up the project, or are there other reasons that could lead to a conflict of interest?
No, land use isn’t usually a major concern because our technology requires a relatively small footprint. The primary issue we’ve encountered is related to concerns about the broader implications of our technology.
For example, in the United States, coal power plants use large amounts of water for cooling, and theoretically, we could integrate our technology with their cooling systems. However, environmental groups might argue that doing so could reinforce the power plant’s operation and make it more challenging to transition away from coal. So, even though our technology itself might not add significant environmental impact, the association with existing infrastructure could raise concerns about perpetuating the status quo.
This issue isn’t necessarily about the specific infrastructure, like a cooling system or an evaporation pond, but rather about the broader implications of integrating with infrastructure that could be seen as contributing to environmental challenges. It’s about who we partner with and how our technology might be perceived in the context of their operations.
So from a community perspective, even though your technology helps mitigate the negative impacts of a particular industry, the concern could be that by making the project more feasible or attractive, you might support or prolong the operation of that industry. This could influence how the community perceives the overall impact.
Exactly. For example, in our current pilot project, we’re integrating our technology with a desalination plant that is located in a village, which also owns the plant. We are working closely with this village, collaborating with them throughout the project. It exemplifies how we aim to work together with local communities, rather than coming from the outside and implementing our technology without considering their needs and perspectives.
Congratulations on raising the recent investment. What are your plans for deploying the funds from your recent funding round? Could you also share your plans for global expansion and which countries you think your technology could be expanded to in the near future?
Thank you for the kind words. Most of the funds from our recent round will be allocated to scaling up our technology and advancing our pilot projects. Technology development often begins on a small scale, but the real costs escalate when moving to larger facilities. Engineering becomes significantly more expensive as the scale increases. Therefore, a substantial portion of the funds will support the scale-up and piloting phases. The pilot project we’re working on could become the largest water-based carbon dioxide removal facility in the world, with a capacity of 400 tons per year.
Regarding global expansion, our focus will be on countries that meet two key criteria: regulatory incentives for decarbonization technologies and significant water resources or infrastructure. We are targeting the United States and Europe due to their supportive regulatory environments. Additionally, we’re interested in countries with substantial desalination infrastructure, such as the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf nations. We are also looking at regions with the potential for very cheap renewable energy, such as Latin America and North Africa, where large hydrogen projects are being developed. These areas represent significant opportunities for our technology.
Thank you so much, Dan, for sharing all this information with us and our readers. We wish you and CarbonBlue all the best for the future.
Thank you. I’d like to take a moment to share one more vision for CarbonBlue. Imagine a world where we no longer rely on oil as a source of energy. With sufficient solar, nuclear, and other forms of renewable energy, we could potentially phase out oil and gas. However, there’s an important aspect of oil that we often overlook: its role as a source of carbon for plastics.
Even if we generate enough renewable energy and stop extracting oil for energy purposes, we’ll still need oil for plastics. CarbonBlue envisions a future where we provide carbon dioxide as a feedstock for various applications that require carbon, such as plastics, fuels, and other industrial uses.
Picture this: the car you drive is carbon negative, with all its plastics made from carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere and the fuel you use being synthetic, generated from captured carbon. This vision of a sustainable future encompasses not only low-carbon energy but also low-carbon dioxide solutions. This is where CarbonBlue aims to make a difference, extending beyond just carbon dioxide removal technology.
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