Brooklyn-based Vycarb is tackling the promising opportunity of water-based carbon capture and storage.
Oceans, which cover more than 70% of the Earth’s surface, are the world’s biggest carbon sink. Vycarb’s technology captures CO2 from bodies of water with high concentrations of carbon and processes it into bicarbonate through a filtration system. Bicarbonate, which appears to be a stable way of sequestering carbon, can then be released back into water systems.
The company has applied its approach in New York’s East River, where it is studying the environmental impacts of its process and testing its CO2 measurement sensors.
The company raised $5 million in seed equity with backing from Australia-based decarbonization investor Twynam; MOL Switch, the venture arm of Japanese shipping company Mitsui OSK Lines; and Japanese oil and gas company Idemitsu. SGInnovate, the Singaporean government’s innovation initiative, invested, citing “global demand for deployable, measurable carbon capture and storage technologies and Singapore’s goal of reaching net zero emissions.”
Norway-based Hatch Blue and California-based Clocktower Ventures also participated in the round.
Measure better
Most marine carbon removal, or mCDR, is accounted for based on models that gauge how much CO2 can be captured through tested chemical reactions.
“Models don’t reflect reality,” wrote Vycarb’s Garrett Boudinot. “They’re built on major assumptions… and while the models’ simplicity makes them easy to rely on, it also makes them wildly inaccurate.”
One model Vycarb tested would have overstated by 100x how much CO2 its process sequestered. The company is developing its own sensors that account for natural variability in water conditions to assess how bicarbonate reacts when released in real time.
“To succeed,” said Boudinot, “mCDR – and CDR writ large – must prove that carbon is being removed and stored in practice, rather than in theory.”
