paulgross

Remora (YC W21) | carbon capture for semi-trucks | Remote US or Detroit, MI | remoracarbon.com

Remora (YC W21) builds a device that captures a semi-truck’s carbon emissions directly from the tailpipe. We sell the CO2 to end-users who can store it away for a long time. We split that revenue with our customers, so the device pays for itself in just a couple years.

We’re looking for all kinds of new team members — from growth to policy to recruiting to all manner of engineers (software, electrical, mechanical, chemical).

We’re also building our leadership team, starting with directors of operations, supply chain/manufacturing, mechanical engineering, R&D, and controls/electronics.

If you want to help build carbon capture for semi-trucks, apply now at remoracarbon.com/jobs.

Absolutely. The main answer is going to be permanent geologic storage in depleted oil wells or saline aquifers, which is widely agreed to be one of the most scalable form of carbon sequestration. We're also hoping to turn the CO2 back into fuel right at the truck stop, so we can put it right back into the trucks!

Absolutely — this technology would work very well for cargo ships, and after we make it work for semi trucks, we plan definitely to scale up to help decarbonize other hard-to-electrify forms of long-haul transport like locomotives and cargo ships.

There's a new technology that allows concrete producers to inject carbon dioxide into concrete. Two of the leading companies in this space are CarbonCure and Solidia.

They aren't - concrete producers, chemical producers, and many other end users actually only need CO2 that's > 90% pure, a bar that we'll very easily clear.

Many concrete producers are using technology invented by CarbonCure and Solidia to inject CO2 into concrete, which makes it stronger. It's one of the most permanent forms of sequestration, so it takes the CO2 out of circulation forever. Right now, these concrete plants don't have the capability to capture their own CO2, which would be a very elegant solution. In the medium term, as that gets built out, we're going to be switching to permanently sequestering our CO2 in depleted oil wells and saline aquifers, rather than selling it to concrete producers. And in the long term, we hope to turn it back into fuel right at the truck stop. So selling to concrete producers is only the first step of our roadmap for CO2 sequestration!

Totally. We'd genuinely love to be wrong - electrification is a great solution where it works! But our team has built battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell class 8 trucks, and our experience suggests they’re decades away from competing for long haul transport (given range, charging time, payload capacity, etc.). Even if that day comes, our solution is a fraction of the cost, works today with existing fleets, and with biofuels, it can make a truck carbon negative! That's something electrification wouldn't be able to achieve even if we did manage to overhaul the world's grid so that it's completely renewable, which we think will take decades, especially in the developing world.

Thanks so much for that feedback. Definitely don't want to lean too heavily on Gates - we just decided to quote him to show that we're not the only ones who think electrification is going to be trickier for long-haul trucking than for cars! We're hearing this from a lot of our early customers as well, and we're definitely planning to share quotes from them as well down the line, once we're able to.

That's a great idea. We've definitely been thinking about partnering with the government, especially with the Biden admin.

This is a super interesting idea. We hadn't thought of this application, but definitely one that we'll consider!

The great thing about truck-sized units is that they can be modular, so we can easily mass produce them. The challenge with stationary units for power plants is that each one has to be custom-designed from the ground up. Plus, you have to put in tons of capital up front for a power plant, whereas our units are very cheap to make. That's why we think mobile carbon capture is the more scalable approach.

Oops, citations [1] and [2] got mixed up. This is the correct link: https://apnews.com/article/04029bd1e0a94cd59ff9540a398c12d1

Companies like CarbonCure and Solidia are doing new work on technology that allows concrete producers to inject CO2 into concrete, which makes the concrete stronger. It's really exciting technology, and they've already got plants operating around the country.

CO2 is used in concrete, greenhouses, refrigeration, dry ice, chemicals, fertilizer, carbonating sodas, etc. - there's actually 230 million tons of demand for CO2 every year! So plenty of opportunities for us to sell the CO2 we're capturing.

Yes absolutely. We're not going to use our CO2 to extract more fossil fuels - we're only going to work with end users (like concrete producers) that permanently sequester it.

Exactly!

We wanted to start by building a low-cost, modular device that we can retrofit onto existing semi trucks, since that's much easier than retrofitting onto a cargo ship or other boat. But we definitely hope to expand to mining haul trucks, locomotives, cargo ships and other bigger forms of long-haul transport down the line!

This is a great thought — I have a similar response around the challenges with picking up the captured CO2 from such a decentralized network of capturing devices, but definitely something we'll explore down the line.

Thanks so much!

Thanks so much! You might also enjoy that the legal name of our company is Echeneidae Inc. :)

Exactly!

This is exactly right. For an average semi truck (6 mpg, 100,000 miles/year), if we capture 80% of its carbon emissions, we'll be capturing ~ 135 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, which is roughly the same as 6,200 trees * 22 kg/year.

The tank in the video is just a component of the device overall. The device is 2 cubic meters total, including the storage tank. We'll be storing 600 miles worth of CO2 at a time, or roughly 1800 pounds of CO2.

Thanks Tito. We're big fans of AirMiners!

We add our device downstream of the DPF, so it's entirely complementary.

Good to know. We use the term "semi truck" because it's more widely used, and we figured that folks might not know the term class 8 truck!

The atmosphere is only 0.04% CO2, whereas vehicle exhaust is about 13% CO2, so it's much easier (and less energy-intensive) to capture CO2 from a tailpipe. We definitely want to partner with folks working to turn CO2 into fuel — we'd love to turn our CO2 into fuel at truck stops so we can put it right back into the trucks.

Totally. Definitely could be cool to explore down the line.

We think the impact to fuel efficiency will be < 3%, but we'll be doing more testing over the next couple months to get an exact figure. We'll capture those extra carbon emissions, and we'll more than pay for the extra fuel cost by sharing the revenue from selling the carbon dioxide.

We'd love to have you come by our shop any time - just shoot us an email at hello@remoracarbon.com!