Verdox, a company founded by chemical engineers from MIT and winner of the XPRICE Carbon Removal award, is already working with its first client in the field of carbon dioxide capture.
First developed in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)the technology enabled by Verdox promises to revolutionize climate change thanks to an efficient and sustainable method of capturing carbon dioxide (CO₂).
It is a kind of battery: conductive electrodes coated with a compound called polyanthraquinonewhich has a natural chemical attraction to CO₂ only under certain conditions.
When this device is activated by a low level electrical current, becomes charged, reacts with the CO₂ molecules that circulate through it and attracts them to its surface. Once the battery becomes saturated, the CO₂ can be released by applying a voltage change as a stream of pure gas.
As can be seen in the diagram made by Hatton Lab, the technology allows a flow of air or combustion gas (blue) containing carbon dioxide (red) enter the system from the left.
As you pass between thin battery electrode platesthe carbon dioxide sticks to the charged plates while the clean air stream passes in and out to the right.
The urgency of removing CO₂ from the atmosphere
The race to find viable and sustainable carbon capture systems has intensified in recent years, as various scientific models predict that any hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change means limiting CO₂ concentrations below 450 parts per million by 2100. .
“Alternative energies will only take humanity so far, and a major CO₂ phase-out will be an important tool in the race to remove the gas from the atmosphere”, MIT points out.
Vortex is confident that he is winning that race with his system, seeing it as an alternative “elegant and efficient”. Most attempts to capture carbon from an exhaust stream or from the air itself require a large amount of energy.
But Vortex has come up with a design whose electrochemistry makes carbon capture seem almost effortless. “We show that our technology works in a wide range of CO₂ concentrationsfrom the 20 percent or more found in cement and steel industry exhaust streams to the very diffuse 0.04 percent in the air itself,” says Alan Hatton, Ralph Landau professor of chemical engineering at the MIT.
In addition, this technology has shown that it can reduce energy consumption for certain types of carbon capture by 70% compared to other technologies.
First steps in the market
After overcoming several vital challenges to make the project viable, Verdox has started working with its first commercial client: the Norwegian aluminum company Hydrowhich aims to remove CO₂ from the exhaust gases of its smelters as it transitions to carbon-free production.
Verdox is also developing systems that can efficiently extract CO₂ from ambient air. “We are designing units that would look like rows of large fans that pull air into the boxes that hold our batteries”informs the company.
Such approaches could be especially useful in places such as airfields, where there are higher than normal concentrations of CO₂ emissions.
But all this captured carbon has to go somewhere. Carbfix has a proven method of mineralizing captured CO₂ and deposit it in deep underground caverns. Thanks to that, Verdox will have a place to deposit the gas that cannot be immediately reused for industrial applications, such as new fuels or construction materials.