Two years ago, a former spacex engineer used rocket technology to develop a power plant can eliminate carbon dioxide From the atmosphere, with a small asterisk. To draw co2It burns plant waste, creating a “vegetarian rocket engine” for the box.
This week, Arbor Energi said it had brought in $55 million led by LowerCarbon and Accer’s Voyager capital on the heels of a partial pivot. Energy plants, instead of sticking to a strict vegetarian diet, will be more of an omnivore, able to burn natural gas in addition to biomass.
Shift happens This year as the demand for electricity from data centers has boomed. Existing designs can properly handle powerful AI servers, but their reach will be limited by wood resources and agricultural waste. Natural gas is more available.
Arbor still plans to capture the co2 From power plants, which use ox-ox-ox, which convert hydrocarbons into syngas and then burn in the presence of pure oxygen. Results for co2 That doesn’t take much preparation to recede.
Because of tax credits, saving co2 It would be cheaper than dumping pollutants into the atmosphere, Arbor spokesman Patrick Mahoney told TechCrunch. The company does not plan to sell the technology to businesses that do not plan to capture carbon for use or sequestration, he said.
But garbage co2 Why not just climate considerations when it comes to natural gas. The main component of natural gas is methane, a greenhouse gas that is more warming than carbon dioxide by more than 20 years.
Because there is a leak in the natural gas supply chain it can have an effect that is cleaned by the climate effect of the natural gas-based power plant. A leakage rate of less than 0.2% means that the carbon footprint of a power plant can be the same as that of a coal plant, according to the report new researchSee rank-. The US government has approximately The rate of leakage throughout the oil and gas supply is around 1%, whereas Satellite Measurements Show rates are around 1.6% in the US
Arbor says it is working with natural gas suppliers that are certified to have low leakage rates, with the aim of achieving the climate impact of electricity from one kilowatt of electricity producing 100 grams (about a quarter).
The startup confirmed that it is still in the process of building a plant in Louisiana that will burn biomass. The plant is financed in part by a $41 million overcome the frontierAdvanced marketplace commitment powered by Stripe, Google, and more. Under the agreement, Arbor must remove 116,000 tons of carbon dioxide by 2030.