YouSaid · the spoken record

Talal Al Shukairi

lines on the record: 52
first: 2022-12-13
most recent: 2022-12-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Talal and I both grew up in the beautiful nature of Omana. It's a very picturesque, very just gorgeous landscape country with mountains and oceans and just beautiful, beautiful scenery all around, beautiful nature. And we spend our childhood in that. Over time, we started to see the effects of climate change as well as just generally problems in the environment, things like plastic pollution and actually one day Talal woke up and saw an article in the news that described how one of the largest oceanic dead zones in the world is actually just off the coast of Oman. It's about the size of Florida. What that means is basically an area in the ocean in which life cannot thrive because of its concentration of CO2. So when we looked into why that was happening to our oceans, we realized that it is because of CO2 induced warming of the oceans that were preventing life from existing in that area. And we wanted to do something about it because it was affecting the nature that we grew up in which we love.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The climate crisis, but it's going to take a lot of work and we need to kind of roll up our sleeves and get to work. And finally, here's Carne sharing the inspiration behind 4401. Discovering the world's largest dead zone right in his backyard, together with his co-founder Tala.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Asked Laura the same thing. What signals or what things are you paying attention to that make you really hopeful about the future of CDR or I guess our collective fight against climate change? Yeah, I love that question. I think it's a really important question. And I personally am extremely hopeful because the basic chemistry that we need to make carbon dioxide mobile work at very large scales pretty straightforward. And we have the technologies. If there's a technological breakthrough to make it much more energy efficient, so much the better, right? But what we need is markets for and also willingness consumers to pay for carbon credits. We need the raw materials for decarbonization and widespread adoption of renewable or low carbon energy technologies. And this all is starting to emerge, right? At the same time, you can just feel the energy in the air. And so I'm feeling hopeful that by the time I'm a grandparent, we will be well on the path to solving.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The thing that makes me most hopeful is, I think, in the last couple years, we've seen just an explosion of techniques. There was really, prior to that, there was this one approach, director capture, which is the brute force backstop. We're going to need it. And it's awesome that people have been working on it for as long as they have. It's awesome that Climorx Orca has actually deployed. We need more deployment. Let's not announce fundraising and renderings and offtakes. Let's announce more things like actual deliveries. So super excited about Climorx ARCA as well as Charm's progress last year in delivering tonnage. But I think there are now a lot of companies on deck that will be actually deploying over the next few years with a whole bunch of interesting technologies. And so that, I think, is what gives me a feeling of hope is just seeing a dozen new interesting technologies, all with pretty promising economics coming into the field.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then we were able to start delivering in 2021. But that was product market fit for us. I would say we are in a carbon dioxide removal as a heavily supply constrained market. We actually are sold out now on carbon removal for our capacity through 2025. That is product market fit. And the question is like, how do we actually deliver the physical capacity fast enough given the like demand? If we had more capacity, we could sell a lot more.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My co-founder Sean had a really key breakthrough where he realized that this biowill that we were producing we could inject underground as a way of disposing of it. And that would actually be a carbon removal pathway. And within 72 hours of him having that idea, we built a technoeconomic model. We sent it over to the folks at Stripe Climate. And within 72 hours, they were like, Buy 250k of it. And so this product market fit, right? And from there, a few months later, Shopify made a big purchase a few months later, Microsoft made a big purchase.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which can still be sequestered. And so we end up with the same carbon removal capacity in addition to one to two tons of reduction along the way. And so basically getting two to three x the leverage in terms of climate impact on the same amount of biomass and the same amount of bio. So I think we're excited about that. And then the co-products there are, of course, iron and carbon removal. And getting to double down on the economics there also gives significant leverage in terms of the economics.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Paralyzer produces two co products of bio oil and char. The char we don't expect to sell, but we'll put it back on the field and hopefully it reduces the cost of biomass because it's putting nutrients back in that the farmer needs and improving their soil health and so on. So ideally, it reduces the cost of the biomass for us, but we don't intend to sell it per se. In the long run, we also think that we would like to take bio oil and not just inject it, but also run it through an iron making process where we replace the natural gas or coal used in iron making with bio oil. And out of that iron making process, you get a pure CO2 stream.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“4401's ambitions are to get to a billion tons a year by 2040. So we would by far outstrip all the demand for at least the used cooking oil in Oman that would be refined into biodiesel. So we need to now figure out a different solution to get to these low carbon levels. That is not constrained by the used cooking oil that's available in the country. So piping is one of those options. We will need to eventually get to a point of the amount of scale of CO2 that's being transported across the country that warrants building out large infrastructure which is piping. And the second is, of course, renewables. So using solar and wind and other forms of renewables to power our operations at night. So we currently use the biodiesel not just for transportation, but also to power operations at night since the sun doesn't shine all the time. So we need to figure out how to build an optimal renewable load to be able to power our operations 24 hours in the most net negative way.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. The company, so it operates entirely as a separate entity. 44.1 has a representative on the board, but effectively it has its own management team and sells biodiesel to the local market for other players as well. So it's definitely operating and will scale in its own merit to different countries within the GCC to start. So yes, it has its own objectives and could scale on its own way. But the limiting factor here is that only a certain”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Elected locally in Oman, from restaurants, from food kitchens, and refines it into biodiesel. That biodiesel burns with 90% less CO2 than Petrodiesel does. And it's a drop in fuel. So there's no infrastructure changes that are required for a truck that would need to be powered by diesel. So we can just drop in the biodiesel and set the petrodiesel, and that reduces the amount of CO2 emissions from transport by 90%. And in that way, we can increase the amount of CO2 that is eventually after the point of capture.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our objective is to make the entire process as net negative as possible or when it comes to building out, let's say, a life cycle carbon analysis. We're trying to maximize the amount of carbon that's actually removed through mineralization compared to the point of capture. Transportation is a huge emissions component of that that reduces the amount of net negativity. Most options, let's say trucking, use some form of fossil fuels to power that vehicle. Piping is of course a much more environmentally friendly option in terms of emissions, but you need massive amounts of scale or massive amounts of CO2 transportation to warrant building out a huge pipeline. So at the moment at 4401 in our nascent stage, we are trucking. But what we did is envisioning that the petrodiesel element would be a problem. We actually set up a biofuel plant under a separate subsidiary called Wakud, which 44.1 has a minority shareholding in. Wakud refines used cooking oil.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Once again, we're noticing the importance of proximity in operationalizing these solutions because anytime there's transportation, carbon removal companies need to factor those emissions in. There's just no use in injecting carbon into the ground if you're releasing an equivalent amount in the process. So here, car ensures how 4401 is getting creative with their transportation infrastructure.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Required for that process. The point source capture happens where that facility exists, and that might not necessarily be where our syncs or our rock is available. And that requires a transportation element. That can be done in a variety of ways, trucking, piping, if it's cross-continent, it can be shipped as well. But that is a whole other cost element in the pie. The advantages of point source capture is that it's a more mature technology at the moment, so it can capture more CO2 per dollar of CapEx invested in that capture technology. The reason it can do that as well is because the concentration of CO2 in a flu stack is much higher than in the atmosphere. So in the atmosphere, it's 0.04% in a flu stack it can be depending on the process between 4% and 100%. So that cost of capture drops significantly, but then you have to add in the transportation component, which balances that out. So we're working with both.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the first is direct air capture. So, this is where CO2 is captured directly from the atmosphere and basically a decentralized capture unit can be placed directly on the carbon sink itself, literally on our sites where we inject. The advantage of that is that we don't require any transportation of the CO2 for over long distances. So that's able to eliminate a massive cost element within the carbon capture and removal value chain. So with direct air capture, there is no transport, but it is a nascent technology. And the direct air capture partners that we're working with at the moment are working as hard as us to scale down their costs as well. The other model is the point source capture model, which is capturing CO2 from an existing industrial facility, a hard to decarbonize facility, things like cement production, steel production that are really carbon-heavy products and really need a fossil fuel at the moment, at least, a fossil fuel source to power that high heat that's required.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“4401 has already sold thousands of tons at $170, with expectations of a 10x decrease. The exact kind of exponential decline you'd want to see in a space like this. But this is just for their mineralization process, which they expect to be a minority of the cost as they can borrow many learnings from the already established oil and gas industry in the region. They still need to account for the CO2 stream feeding into the reaction. And for this side of the reaction, they're exploring two options.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, our card cost on pilot level is probably over $1,000 per ton. And that's only the mineralization cost itself. So that doesn't include the cost of capture. But that is really a pilot R&D value. When we get to commercial scale, we're estimating that our costs are going to be around $170 a ton to start. And actually, we've sold approximately 6,000 tons of mineralization capacity already to the voluntary market at that cost. We expect that we're going to be able to get at scale to around $15 a ton. So that's at over 10x decrease as we are able to scale up our sites. And that scale is really based on two factors. How much CO2 can we get into each borehole, therefore spreading our capex across multiple tons that we can inject? And then how many boreholes can we build? That's what we're going to be determining starting middle of next year, Q2 2023, where we're going to be building our first commercial wells.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Perspective, our approach is to try and figure out the logistics and arcets associated with each of the individual products. That's challenging in some ways because some of the products are difficult to handle. So for example, hydrogen in some context might make more sense for us to use on-site and recover some electricity with a fuel cell rather than to compress and sell just because it's costly to compress it, it's costly to transport it. And so if we're not sitting at a port where hydrogen is traded, it might make more sense for us to just use the green hydrogen.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think this business development side is really one of the most exciting parts for me because I come from an academic background and I'm not used to thinking about this, but I think it's a really kind of fun strategic puzzle to address. For us, as you alluded to, there are a number of products that can be considered or are technically commodity products that we're producing in our process, which means that we have quite a bit of flexibility in terms of business model development, the way that we can approach that. What I will say is that we will, to the maximum extent possible, try to use every product that we produce, right? You know, it would be much better, for example, to have our carbonate products be used as green cement feedstocks rather than just have them as backfill, which is fine, you know, it's fine to have a pile of limestones sitting around or carbonates, but it's much better to take advantage of the fact that that could lower the carbon intensity of concrete production, for example. And so from a business model,”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can start to get a sense of just how complex some of these business models become. Trying to balance the technical challenge of running the reaction while operationalizing the inputs and outputs. In Travertine's case, that includes accessing renewable electricity, sourcing inputs like sulfate waste, selling byproducts like sulfuric acid, and factoring in location for all of the above. But perhaps that itself is part of the opportunity. I think one really fascinating part of Travertine's process is specifically that the byproducts are not useless. In fact, they're very useful.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ideal for us. And so, in terms of scaling up to commercial building plants that have good return on investment for the folks helping subsidize the capital cost is going to depend on kind of strategic siting, at least in the early days.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The question of whether or not peak sulfur will happen in the next century. It's not a question of is there sulfur somewhere in Saudi Arabia, for example. It's a question of is there sulfur at a port that I can put on a train and bring to my plant in the desert, for example. And so in this case, we need to be strategic about mapping demand for sulfuric acid. We want to be sitting somewhere where the sulfuric acid would be used. It doesn't make a lot of sense to be transporting it. And this is typically how the sulfuric acid community market works is it's produced where it's used. So that's number one. Number two is that place where it's being used also has to have some abundant relatively affordable source of renewable electricity, right? And then number three, ideally we'd be able to sell our carbonate products and our hydrogen into a local market. And so being relatively close to markets for green cements, for example, or for green hydrogen would be.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sulfuric acid in particular seems to be going through an interesting supply demand inflection point. Some people forecast its supply is waning due to the shift away from fossil fuels, which generate over 80% of global sulfur. While the demand for it is expected to increase, particularly for the use of green technologies like EV batteries or solar panels, Laura even shared with me an academic paper from Mark Maslow's group at the University of College London that cites this confluence of factors and predicts we're heading toward a sulfur shortage, although Laura does note that not everyone agrees. But shortage or not, travertin is strategically selecting where they operate in order to take advantage of this lucrative revenue stream, which again is a byproduct of their process.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, for us, there is a world in which the sales of our co products, so commodity sulfuric acid, commodity green hydrogen, potentially even commodity oxygen, and then the carbonate products can actually subsidize entirely the cost of carbon dioxide removal, which by that I mean, you know, we could maybe be doing carbon dioxide removal for free, although we'd want to take advantage of any tax credits available, for example, to us. Now, the cost of our process is driven in large part by the water electrolysis process, which is highly energy intensive. And so the cost of the overall products that we generate are very sensitive to the price of renewable electricity that's available to us. And so we're trying to be strategic about the siting of our plants in the sense that we want to be using excess renewable energy that's not otherwise going to be going to a grid that needs it. So a place where there's”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Another fascinating way that some of these companies are moving down the cost curve is through the sale of their byproducts. Remember when I told you to put a pin in sulfuric acid? Well, here's Laura from Travertine exploring the potential sale of it in addition to their other byproducts, green hydrogen, oxygen, and carbonate products.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Today we sell and deliver right around $600 a ton CO2 removed. And that compares to other really high quality carbon removal direct capture in Iceland, for example, is like $900 to $1,000 a ton. So compares somewhat favorably to that as compared to like cheap, low quality offsets that don't have much impact, those are probably in like the $20 a ton range right now, although they've increased over the last year or two as corporate demand has gone up. In terms of our long-term cost, we are targeting and think we can get under $50 a ton. We are also designing our own totally fit for purpose designed to come down the cost curve pyrolyzer that we'll start deploying in the next few years. So that's how we delivered today. We do pay the farmers for biomass and how much you pay them really depends on how far you move the biomass. You really want to avoid moving biomass. It's really fluffy. It's diffuse, very complicated to move and expensive. Today we get biomass delivered.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, in addition to meaningful scale, these solutions need to be facilitated at a reasonable price. But what's reasonable here? You might remember from prior episodes that most carbon removal solutions today causing the upper hundreds to thousands of dollars per year. But eventually, people are eyeballing solutions closer to $50 a ton. Here's how term industrial is thinking about bringing down cost.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As we dig into these solutions, I hope it's becoming increasingly clear that we're not looking for a scientific miracle. These are operators on the ground figuring out how to connect the right dots, like planning their site strategically so they have access to the right inputs from sulfate waste piles that can be seen from space to water sources to renewable electricity. Perhaps Laura says it best here”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Capture and transportation. And secondly, we require water for our process. So we need an existing water source next to our site in order to be able to dissolve the CO2 into it and then create the fluid mixture that we then inject into the subsurface. So those are the really two major limiting factors. Those two factors will determine what sites are most optimal for our process. And those two limiting factors will also determine at what cost we can do that injection at. And then it becomes an economic scheme. Can we do it in a feasible way? that will be relevant for not just us on a cost level, but then eventually buyers of this high quality form of carbon removal such that they can afford it.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Comes to the abundance of the rock itself, that's not a limiting factor. In fact, we've done some just back at the envelope calculations and we understand that the amount of peridotite that exists in Oman and the UAE alone could mineralize trillions of tons of CO2. Basically, all the emissions that humans have ever emitted since the pre-industrial age. We were able to snap our fingers and convert all that peridotide into nared carbonate minerals through the mineralization process. We could reverse climate change. The actual access that we can gain to that rock is the limiting factor. And that depends on several variables. Firstly, where the CO2 source is and how we get that CO2 to our site. So that involves”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so we can talk about two different things. So, the first is mind telling, the second is fertilizer waste byproducts. Mind tailings and kind of mind sulfate wastes are really just left. So the tailings would be left residual on site. It would really just look like it might be backfilled or it might just look like a big pile. And that would simply be left behind as something that we could beneficially reuse. Sulfate wastes, which are generated in extractive processes through sulfuric acid extractions, are often held on site and then discharged when possible. And so basically the mining company will wait for a rainstorm so they can discharge a little bit more sulfate waste to be below their threshold discharge limit and how much they can put in the water. Now in terms of fertilizer sulfate waste production, all of those sulfate wastes are called phosphogypsums and they're generally left behind in a big pile. And so you can see these piles from space. They're so enormous. For example, in Florida, we have about a billion tons. It's estimated of these sulfate wastes just piled up.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What specifically happening with this waste currently? As in the waste from these tailings, from these mining companies, are they selling them? Are they sequestering them somewhere? Are they just sitting there? What actually happens to these tailings if you were not to work with them?”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What's changing over the next couple of decades is a critical element extraction industry. And so between now and 2040, it's projected that another several hundred million tons of sulfuric acid will be needed per year because we'll be producing so much nickel, so much more lithium and other critical elements for the renewable energy transition. And many of the byproduct materials of that increased mining are going to be greatstocks for our process. And so there's been an estimate that we're going to need maybe six times as much nickel production by 2040. If we produce as much tailings as we do today in that production process, then that would generate sufficient tailings to do about a billion tons of carbon dioxide removal and sequestration with our process every year. And so we really”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, absolutely. And I think those scales that we're talking about are the aim of gigaton scale, right? And gigaton potentially per year, which is an incredibly staggering scale to do any kind of chemistry, right? We're talking now the world's largest chemical industries working at that scale and a totally new process that's never been done before, right? So the exciting thing is that our feedstocks for our process are already produced at magnitudes that are relevant to carbon dioxide removal at the hundreds of megatons per year scale. So for example, fertilizer production generates hundreds of million tons every year of sulfate waste called phosphogypsum waste that could be upcycled again to form calcium carbonate minerals. So taking CO2 out of the air and turning it into that solid phase.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our number one constraint right now is the amount of biowel production capacity, and so that's something we're working very hard on expanding so that we can grow faster than currently forecast. And once we're able to mass manufacturer pyrolyzers, we think that the bottleneck will pretty quickly, not quickly, but at meaningful scale, shift to biomass. So there's probably about a billion tons a year of biomass residues available in North America, Mexico, Canada, US, between all various crops. A billion tons per year is like 10% of the carbon removal that's needed. you can see expansion then into other biomass regions india brazil maybe nigeria places like that so those are the sorts of places where we'll expand and we expect that we'll be eventually biomass limited to the scale of several billion tons per year”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's a great question. The natural science was really worked on by two leading professors in the field amongst a group of others. Their names are Professor Peter Kelleman and Professors York Matter. And they effectively worked on observing this reaction, this natural reaction in the field for the last 10 to 15 years in Oman and the UAE in particular. What helped us as 44.1 come in and help accelerate that reaction to form this permanent process of carbon removal was that it was really about having the key players in place at the right time. So we were able to engage with the local regulatory authorities to get the required permits to test this in the field, not just observe the natural phenomenon, but then test how it could be accelerated. It was also about bringing these premier scientists onto our team of local experts, including engineers that are familiar with reservoir modeling processes, with side characterization processes, with injection technologies, putting together the right team as well as”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Around 100,000 Able to mineralize every unit of CO2. Within a year. And actually, that rate is something that we're currently testing in our pilot experiments in the field. But we estimate that it's going to be able to accelerate it around 100,000 times”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The rock is naturally reacting with CO2 constantly. So it's actually because the rock is in an unnatural state being on the surface rather than below the oceans, it has been for thousands of years naturally reacting with the CO2 in the air and absorbing CO2 through a process called mineralization. What we're effectively doing is accelerating that process by creating the physical and chemical characteristics in the geological reservoir itself to speed that up, that things like pressure, temperature, and differences in alkalinity between the CO2 H2O fluid mixture and the rock itself enable us to be able to speed that up significantly to be able to mineralize meaningful amounts of CO2 rather than the glacial pace that we've been observing, which is the natural phenomenon.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. The rock that we use is called Prototype. The rock itself is high in olivine, which is a mineral that reacts with CO2. It's an oceanic mantle rock that's normally found several kilometers below the Earth's surface. In particular, parts of the world that rock has been thrust up onto the surface through past tectonic activity such that it's available on the surface to work with. And one of those locations is particularly in Oman and the UAE. The two countries that we're currently operating in. That rock is found in abundance. It's actually the largest form of this rock on the planet at the moment, which gives us unparalleled access to be able to test our process in those specific locations.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So 4401 takes carbon dioxide from companies that capture the CO2 in the first place. So either a direct air capture company or a company that captures CO2 from the flu stack of an industrial facility and then eliminates it permanently. For that capture company. So we effectively sit as the company that off takes the CO2 and then eliminates it from existence. The way that we do that is by mixing the CO2 with water and then injecting it in specific geological formations where the rock in that formation reacts with the fluid mixture of CO2 and H2O and turns that CO2 within the water into an inert carbonate mineral, a different rock, thereby immobilizing it permanently in solid form and having no risk of re-release into the future.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. Yeah. And the stuff that we inject, what's cool is it's very dense. So after injection, it actually sinks inside the rock formations that it's injected into. And then because it has this chemical compound called phenols in it, the phenols react and it actually solidifies. So it like locks itself into the rock structure like glue.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even with no-till, huge 98%, I think, of the carving goes back into the atmosphere. Rotting in short order. So that's the baseline it would rot, it would slightly improve the carbon content. But if we come through and kind of process it more quickly, we actually put the char in the soil, increase the carbon relative to baseline. And if you look at the soils in the Midwest, in the Great Plains, the carbon content there is partly the reason it's so rich is because there used to be brush fires that would roll across the plains that would effectively create char and increase the soil carbon content. So we're effectively doing like a super good version of that with pyrolysis that should over time increase the amount of topsoil, increase the soil health.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We actually put solid char back on the field. So we actually will prove the soil carbon content relative to baseline and we'll put most of the nutrients, potassium and phosphorus back in, but we'll extract basically some of the carbon and put it deep underground. And if we were to do no-till, if the baseline was no-till, which is like best practice, almost all of the biomass rots.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so every year about 110 billion tons of CO2 comes out of the atmosphere into the biosphere and 110 billion tons of CO2 comes out of the biosphere back into the atmosphere. And the particular crop So, for example, corn. We grow 100 million acres of corn every year in the US. That produces tens of millions of tons of kernels. It also produces about 400 million tons of corn stober. Stalks, the leaves, the clubs, 400 million tons just in the US, just of that one crop. Now, we can't take it all. We need to leave some on the field to protect the soil from erosion, et cetera. But the other 200 to 300 million tons is totally safe for us to process and extract the sort of biowill barbecue sauce from it.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Industrial quantities of natural smoke flavor. It's very carbon rich. And then we inject that thousands of feet down into old oil and gas wells. Plants take CO2 out of the atmosphere. We turn it into barbecue sauce and it goes down the forever hole”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so you have a bunch of plants that are capturing CO2 out of the atmosphere. They're using it to make sure and cellulose, and that's how they build themselves They've already done honestly the hard work for us, but the question is now we need to store it deep underground where we can't mess with it anymore. And so what we do is we cook it into this liquid. It's called bio oil. You should really think of it as barbecue sauce. Bio oil is the natural smoke flavor in barbecue sauce.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Peter went on to share a few more examples with me. Even some rare cases of borderline fraud. But even for well-meaning providers, an important question is surfaced. What solutions are there that we can be relatively confident in the permanence of? Which reminded me of the definition that Nan shared.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we need to set aside this for us then for a thousand years. No regime has survived a thousand years. So how are you going to know the ownership rights are going to remain for a thousand years? These are the sorts of issues that pop up and it's very unclear that any of them are well accounted for or well handled.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most part, it's not straightforward fraud. It's not like people just claiming stuff that isn't happening. It's usually aggressive baselining or sort of additionality question. So, for example, if you purchase offsets in Indonesia and you set aside some rainforest there, does that just mean that the one next door gets logged instead of the one that you protected So that's an additionality question. When there's fires that rage through the Indonesian rainforest, there's huge fires there. Is this forest protected from fire? How? From political perspective, you need to set aside this forest to sort of match the fossil fuel that we've taken out of geological storage and burned and put in the atmosphere. We need to match the permanence by putting something back into super long time storage.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For carbon offsets and carbon removals, I think that's been borne out over the last few years in research that's come out of UC Berkeley and carbon trading project and others where basically like 90% plus of the offsets that are out there are garbage. They really don't have any carbon impact. They do other wonderful things for ecosystems and humans who live in other places. But in terms of carbon impact, pretty minimal. In 2017, that inspired me to spend Saturdays working with some friends trying to figure out if there was a carbon removal pathway would be higher quality and profitable. And then in 2018, we started Charm focused on doing that.”
2022-12-13 · a16z Podcast · Carbon Solutions Now and Next: From Biomass to Mineralization · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source