Sometimes insurance is not just about money. Sometimes it's the team. That's one way to think about direct air capture, a technology that uses machines to extract carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere. The idea has been around for years, but received widespread interest following a 2022 report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said DAC (Direct Air Capture), as the technology is known, would be essential to achieve net zero. carbon emissions.
Several companies are working on the problem, but the obstacles are numerous. Startups have to find suitable places to collect CO2 or customers to buy it. They also need to make their devices cheap to build and operate.
A company, AirMyne, is betting that its patented liquid is the key to overcoming those obstacles. Other companies use liquids to absorb CO2 too, but when it comes time to release the gas, they have to use high temperature heat.
Due to the peculiarities of the chemical reaction involved, high temperature regeneration cycles can be more efficient. But such intense heat can be difficult to achieve, which is why AirMyne developed its liquid to regenerate or release its CO.2using low temperature heat, only 100 to 130 degrees C.
AirMyne's low-temperature heat requirements mean its overall process could be less efficient than a high-temperature approach, but co-founder and CEO Mark Cyffka believes it gives his company a better chance to grow and scale.
"It is flexible. When you're in that pilot stage and you're trying to do your first test, now you can use low temperature heat from electricity, you can use it from industrial waste heat, you can use it from geothermal energy,” he said.
The company is exploring different configurations for the entire system. The collectors will likely be modular, and from them, liquid will flow to a large centralized column for regeneration, similar to the type used in large chemical plants, the kind Cyffka worked on when he was at BASF. The Y Combinator alum is currently testing around 30 prototypes, he added.
The key component in AirMyne liquid appears to be one or more variants of quaternary ammonium compounds, according to the license granted to the company. Quaternary ammonium is a kind of compound that is widely used in a variety of applications, including hand sanitizers, hair care products and fabric softeners. The use of CO2 as an adsorbent has increased recently, in part because it is widely available, relatively stable, and does not require much heat to release CO.2 caught. CO is also released in some preparations.2 when they encounter almost saturated humidity, which offers another way to control liquid regeneration.
The ability to use heat from geothermal energy, Cyffka said, is useful. “It also critically offers this path to scaling, something that I think many other approaches will find difficult if they stay with electric. Geothermal is a really promising path for where DAC needs to go.”
In this sense, the company is working with boil, combining its carbon capture system with the geothermal startup's advanced geothermal project in Utah. with the CO2 that he has captured in his laboratory so far, he has sent samples to CarbonBuilt, the low-carbon cement company, now Ruby, which makes textiles from CO2.
In 2026, AirMyne plans to implement its capture technology carbon at a sequestration site in San Joaquin County, California, where it will be injected underground. To get there, the company recently raised a $6,9 million seed round, TechCrunch has learned exclusively.
AirMyne's use of low-temperature heat could open the door for its technology to be used in a wide range of situations and scenarios, from geothermal facilities to chemical refineries, breweries and more, although the final figure could be limited by the final size of your regeneration line. The liquid-based system will require large amounts of water, from from one to seven tons per ton of carbon captured, as some inevitably evaporates when it comes into contact with the atmosphere. That could preclude its use in dry regions like the southwestern United States.
Still, the demand for carbon capture is likely to be so great that the market will have room for several different companies. AirMyne's inherent compatibility with geothermal could be what helps it create a decent-sized niche.
Investors in the round included Alumni Ventures, Another Brain, Liquid 2 Ventures, EMLES, angel investor Justin Hamilton, Impact Science Ventures, Soma Capital, Wayfinder and Y Combinator.
