Verdox Captures $80M to Develop Novel Electric Carbon Removal Technology

Verdox, an electric carbon capture and removal company, launched today and announced $80M in committed capital from a syndicate including Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), Prelude Ventures, and Lowercarbon Capital. The investment will be leveraged to develop and deploy the company’s novel electrochemical carbon capture technology.

“Combating climate change requires the world to prevent further increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and eventually return them to pre-industrial levels,” according to Dr. Brian Baynes, Founder and CEO of Verdox. “Many industries, however, still lack a plan for complete decarbonization, because of the high cost and energy consumption of currently available capture technologies. Unlike these predecessors, Verdox’s technology has the potential to capture carbon from any industrial source or the air – and at up to 70% relative energy savings, giving us the ability to intervene completely.”

Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations reached a record high 420 ppm last year, on a path to easily exceeding the IPCC’s estimated 2°C warming threshold of 450 ppm. Based on nearly 40 billion metric tons of current annual carbon dioxide emissions, this level would be reached in the next 10 to 20 years. The need for an emissions drawdown is so large that it requires a multi-pronged approach of both natural and technological solutions, including capture from emission sources and the air.

“The high energy efficiency and scalability of Verdox’s technology could enable the company to play a major role in addressing the carbon removal challenge,” says Carmichael Roberts from BEV. “This innovation has provided a paradigm change for both industrial and air capture – and the Verdox team has made great strides to reduce the concept to economical commercial practice.”

Verdox’s core technology was developed by Prof. T. Alan Hatton and Dr. Sahag Voskian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prof. Hatton now serves on the Scientific Advisory Board and Dr. Voskian is the company’s CTO. Prof. Hatton and Dr. Voskian rethought carbon removal by combining the efficiency of electrochemistry with the tunability of organic chemistry. This unique pairing allows for the targeted use of electrical energy to capture and release carbon dioxide at any concentration and unparalleled selectivity. Significantly, this approach eliminates the need for the large amounts of heat and water upon which current carbon dioxide removal solutions rely. The technology breakthrough was first published in 2019 in Energy & Environmental Science: “Faradaic electro-swing reactive adsorption for CO2 capture.”

About Verdox

Verdox is making scalable, cost-effective carbon capture and removal a reality. Founded in late 2019 by Dr. Brian Baynes, Prof. T. Alan Hatton, and Dr. Sahag Voskian, the company is commercializing its electroswing adsorption (ESA) platform technology, originally developed at MIT, to remove carbon dioxide from industrial emissions and the air with 70% energy savings versus conventional approaches.

Source:

Verdox, press release, 2022-02-02.