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Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers

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Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers

#21

Post by [deleted] »

jsantos511 wrote: post #13
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

If you're not injecting the CO2 underground in a stable form, how does this reverse climate change? It sounds like it's simply a cheaper option in some circumstances for sourcing CO2 from the air (compared to traditional solutions by Airgas). Not to take away from your efforts! I think this is a fine improvement to CO2 process needs if you can replace more expensive air extraction techniques, but it doesn't contribut…

Great observation - somewhere between most-to-all of the CO2 that goes into beer, food production, etc ends up back in the atmosphere. Our initial model is the first key step towards the additional solutions we're designing to remove carbon from the atmosphere. The use of CO2 that is sourced from the atmosphere is better from an environmental perspective than the use of CO2 sourced from offshoots of an ethanol plant.…

[deleted]

Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers

#22

Post by londons_explore »

ajhurliman wrote: post #11
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

If you're not injecting the CO2 underground in a stable form, how does this reverse climate change? It sounds like it's simply a cheaper option in some circumstances for sourcing CO2 from the air (compared to traditional solutions by Airgas). Not to take away from your efforts! I think this is a fine improvement to CO2 process needs if you can replace more expensive air extraction techniques, but it doesn't contribut…

I was about to post the same question. I wonder how Airgas gets their CO2.

I assume the cheapest way is to burn methane...

Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers

#24

Post by phtrivier »

Without asking you to reveal too much about your literal "secret sauce", do you already have an estimate for the price per liter of your "chemical carbon capture blend" ? Are we talking liters / tons to operate for a standard year ? Do you have specific IP / RD needed for the production ?

Good luck anyway !

Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers

#27

Post by jsantos511 »

pletsch wrote: post #17

How much CO2 are you actually pulling out of the air? I've read a bit about other carbon capture companies and Carbon Eng. is claiming 1M tons/year with the new facility they're building.

The US is home to over 2M cooling towers: https://www.nsf.org/news/road-map-improve-response-legionnai...

Using the numbers we've calculated with our first partner plant, we're expecting to be able to capture 0.5-1 ton/day with their 25 ton cooling tower. This is a very small tower - for perspective, UCSF operates a 5,400 ton cooling tower to operate their small electricity co-generation plant, and cooling towers at larger power plants can be even bigger than that.

Let's assume though that all 2M cooling towers in the US are the same size as our small 25 ton cooling tower. This equates to an opportunity to capture 730M tons of CO2 / year using really tiny versions of existing US infrastructure.

Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers

#28

Post by avernon »

I love this. I started laughing when I read the description. I laughed because a Harvard physicist (funded by people like Bill Gates) had the same idea to use cooling towers for their DAC project in Carbon Engineering (linked in your post). But as you say, it is still expensive. They are bragging that their design took hundred of man years!

And then you two guys come in with the idea that in hindsight seems completely obvious, use all the cooling towers already out there! The most start up thing ever.

I used to be an engineer at an ammonia plant. Many of them already capture and sell CO2 from their process. So they have the infrastructure to compress and sell CO2 already on site. The plant I worked at was in Augusta, GA. Might be worth checking out ammonia plants as a growth market.

Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers

#29

Post by jsantos511 »

dclusin wrote: post #8
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

If you're not injecting the CO2 underground in a stable form, how does this reverse climate change? It sounds like it's simply a cheaper option in some circumstances for sourcing CO2 from the air (compared to traditional solutions by Airgas). Not to take away from your efforts! I think this is a fine improvement to CO2 process needs if you can replace more expensive air extraction techniques, but it doesn't contribut…

Feels to me like the intention of selling the gas is to offset operational costs until a carbon market for sequestering it underground becomes available?

Yes, and it also gives us the chance to develop sequestration pathways in parallel to fine-tuning the technology. And, if companies can use cleaner sources of CO2 than ethanol offshoots, that would be a net good for the planet as well.

Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers

#30

Post by jsantos511 »

jokoon wrote: post #6
jokoon wrote: post #2

I'm confused, isn't the price of co2 very low? I would guess the oil and gas industry have a lot of co2 to spare. Have you tested this process and mixture?

Cant edit. Also, would it be effective to build new cooling towers? Our doors it work only where there's a source of co2?

Building new cooling towers would drive our costs up as we would have to pay for the capex of the towers in addition to the rest of the process. For now, we are trying to keep everything as low-cost as possible.

Cooling towers typically run outside since they sometimes have water evaporating out the top of them, but even if cooling towers were inside, this would still be a great solution. CO2 concentrations indoors are sometimes even higher than the ones outdoors, which may allow for even higher carbon capture amounts than outdoor systems would.

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