DURHAM, N.C., April 22, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Calcite Carbon Removal emerged from stealth mode today as one of fifteen winners of Elon Musk’s XPrize for Carbon Removal, with its innovative approach to direct air capture receiving an initial $1 million dollar award.
8 Rivers Capital invented Calcite in 2019 and has been quietly advancing the technology in its labs and in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with further funding from the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) FLECCS program. Calcite’s process captures CO2 directly from air and sequesters it underground, aiming to support the world’s climate targets by removing over a billion of tons of CO2 for less than $100 per ton of CO2.
The Calcite process passes ordinary air with approximately ≈415 PPM CO2 across calcium hydroxide in a large warehouse, absorbing CO2 from the air into calcium carbonate crystals, similar to how concrete sidewalks dry and absorb carbon in the process. Warehouse fans then return to the atmosphere CO2-depleted air with <315 PPM CO2. The calcium carbonate that’s created is cycled into a kiln to regenerate calcium hydroxide and capture CO2. The CO2 is then injected underground for permanent storage, while the calcium is recycled to absorb more CO2 from the air. The innovative Calcite process enables rapid carbon uptake at large scale and low cost, through the use of simple equipment, abundant feedstocks, and optimized chemistry.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest assessment report found that, while the bulk of the energy transition will occur through emissions reduction, in order to achieve net zero emissions and hold warming below 2.0C, removing carbon from the atmosphere is “unavoidable.” Removals are needed to counterbalance residual emissions from hard-to-abate sectors. The IPCC estimates that all carbon removal technologies, including direct air capture will need to contribute an absolute minimum of net 40Gt of CO2 captured by the year 2100.
“We can think of no better way to launch Calcite than with the support of the Carbon Removal XPrize,” said Adam Goff, SVP of Strategy at 8 Rivers Capital. “We’re excited to use the XPrize as an accelerant to build our first Calcite plant and hope to announce its location later this year. This first facility would capture thousands of tons of carbon and progress the technology towards removing a billion tons of carbon from the earth’s atmosphere.”
“Scalable, economic direct air capture is vital to help achieve our collective Net Zero goals, and 8 Rivers is tremendously excited to introduce Calcite today,” said Cam Hosie, 8 Rivers CEO. “Calcite uses simple chemistry in an innovative design using a common commodity that is available at tremendous scale, meaning that Calcite is positioned to be a vital contributor to the carbon removal toolkit.”
8 Rivers is a world-leading developer of innovative decarbonization technologies. Before inventing Calcite, 8 Rivers invented the 8RH2 clean hydrogen technology and the paradigm-changing Allam-Fetvedt Cycle power generation system. 8 Rivers is developing marquee zero-emissions projects in the United Kingdom and the United States, with a strong pipeline of global prospects.
Calcite Carbon Removal is named for the carbon-trapping calcium carbonate crystal called calcite. 8 Rivers will now focus on designing, building, and operating a Calcite facility by 2025, which would position Calcite to rapidly scale-up to the full-scale units necessary to remove a billion tons of carbon.
ABOUT 8 RIVERS CAPITAL, LLC: 8 Rivers Capital, LLC is a Durham, NC-based firm founded in 2008 which is leading the invention and commercialization of sustainable, infrastructure-scale technologies as the premier net zero solutions company for industrial decarbonization. 8 Rivers is developing and deploying technologies for clean hydrogen and ammonia (8RH2), transformative zero-emissions power cycles (NET Power and the Allam-Fetvedt Cycle) direct air capture (Calcite), retrofit carbon capture (Carbon8), sour gas sweetening (TarT), clean ethylene (Codox), and other advanced clean energy systems. www.8Rivers.com/calcite.
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SOURCE 8 Rivers Capital, LLC
