Banyu Carbon develops a direct air capture technology that utilizes sunlight to drive a chemical reaction for releasing CO2 from seawater. This process yields both sequesterable carbon dioxide and solar electricity, aiming to significantly lower the cost of carbon removal. The company provides low-cost, verifiable carbon credits to organizations pursuing net-zero targets.
Funding
$6.8M raised to dateRaised to date based on public sources. This may differ from the amount the company actually raised and is based only on what is publicly available on the internet.
CRDOGF+3Founders
Product
Problem
Current carbon removal technologies struggle to meet the scale required to mitigate climate change, falling short by a factor of 10,000 of the billions of tons of CO2 that must be removed annually. Existing methods also often carry high costs and lack easily verifiable carbon credits.
Solution
Banyu Carbon employs a light-driven photochemical process to extract CO2 directly from seawater, offering a potentially scalable and cost-effective carbon removal solution. The process leverages sunlight to drive a chemical reaction that releases CO2 from seawater, which naturally concentrates CO2 from the atmosphere. The liberated CO2 can then be stored in geologic formations or used by industry, generating verifiable carbon credits. The organic compounds used in the process are synthesized from readily available starting materials and do not contain metals or rare elements.
Target Audience
Banyu Carbon's primary customers are companies and governments with ambitious climate goals seeking low-cost and easily verified carbon credits.
Features
- Light-driven photochemical process for CO2 extraction from seawater
- Generates a pure stream of CO2 suitable for geologic storage or industrial use
- Utilizes reusable, light-activated molecules that become acidic when exposed to light, causing dissolved carbon in seawater to degas as CO2
- Designed to use only a small fraction of sunlight for the chemistry, with the remainder used to generate solar electricity
- Organic compounds are easy to synthesize from simple starting materials and contain no metals or rare elements