DIRECT-AIR-CAPTURE: DRIVING INNOVATION FROM WITHIN GERMANY

Florian Hildebrand: Our co-founder, Dr Peter Behr, has developed a technology that enables us to absorb CO2 molecules from the air very efficiently. So quickly, in fact, that around half of the CO2 in the ambient air is absorbed before it rises into the atmosphere. Technically, this is very challenging because although the CO2 concentration in the air is too high, at 0.04 per cent it only makes up a very small proportion of the total. So we are looking for a needle in a haystack, but we are doing it very efficiently. You can think of it as a kind of vacuum cleaner.

Florian Hildebrand: Then we start the hoover bag cleaning process. For us, this is an electrolysis process, at the end of which CO2 is released as a gas and pure hydrogen. That's the trick with Direct Air Capture: you start with 0.04 per cent CO2 and end up with 99.99 per cent highly concentrated CO2 that you can continue working with. The special thing about our process is the hydrogen electrolysis. Of the 120 or so DAC companies worldwide, we are the only ones that work in this way.

Florian Hildebrand: Absorption takes place using either a liquid or a solid process. Climeworks, probably the largest DAC company at present, has a solid absorption process. And this raises the question: how do you clean the bag? You either do this by heating everything to 600, 700, 1000 degrees in an energy-intensive process. Or you do it electrochemically. We combine this with electrolysis, which also produces hydrogen. That is one of the three key elements of our technology.

Florian Hildebrand: Firstly, the very fast absorption of CO2, which means that our vacuum cleaner is very efficient. It is also self-cleaning. With others, when the vacuum cleaner is full, it has to be emptied immediately; you can't continue vacuuming. We use a chemical precipitation reaction, crystallisation, in which the vacuum cleaner effectively cleans itself. This means it can absorb day and night. And we only switch on the hydrogen electrolysis when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. We therefore have the option of decoupling the two processes from each other. And because we need a relatively low initial energy, we can use renewables in all regions of the world.

Florian Hildebrand: In theory, we need around five times less energy than Climeworks. There is no getting round some level of energy consumption. So the question is how to reduce this energy as much as possible. We can do this because the hydrogen we produce is a molecule that contains energy. The second question is: Where does the required energy come from? By decoupling the two process steps, we can work perfectly well around the times that there is sufficient sun or wind without the need for large intermediate storage facilities.
 

Florian Hildebrand: There are three applications. One is direct utilisation, for example in the pharmaceutical or food industry. Then there is the topic of conversion, i.e. conversion into plastics or e-fuels. Sustainable aviation fuel is an important topic for the decarbonisation of air travel and for that you need CO2 and hydrogen, so we are looking very closely at this topic. 
You can also create negative emissions by injecting the CO2 underground or using it as an additive in the processing of concrete.

The Greenberry 2 pilot plant has been running since autumn 2023 and has a filtration capacity of 100 tonnes of CO2 per year.

Florian Hildebrand: We will be launching a new generation of the plant in the summer. Slightly smaller, lighter and modular. We are delivering a system to Canada at the end of the year and therefore had to rethink the size of the system. If the new design proves successful, we'll be able to offer all different sizes in future. We are also currently conducting intensive research into energy efficiency and the industrialisation of components. Our goal is a cost of 80 euros per tonne of CO2, based on the assumption that we also sell the hydrogen produced.

Florian Hildebrand: If you want to do what we do in Germany, you should definitely do it here. Just look at the technology companies here. We have just had a conversation with the CEO of IFM, and we are working with Evonik. So far, we have received over 20 million euros in investment and funding. That's a lot in 18 months. But American companies get two or three times as much, so you have to hold your own. Our process is based on chemical processes that have been operated primarily by companies in NRW and the Ruhr region over the last 100 years. Our strength is that we can bring together new ideas and new technologies based on old processes. That we build up speed by utilising existing expertise. Moreover, 90 per cent of our components come from the region. Developing this further is also an opportunity to develop one or two new businesses for NRW or the Ruhr region. We can drive innovation from Germany. And we want to show that.

Florian Hildebrand: Not in the Ruhr region. There are around four companies in Germany, all with different concepts. But let's be honest: we need to remove ten gigatonnes of CO2 from the air every year by 2050. If Greenlyte achieves the very ambitious target of 100 megatonnes by then, that's just one per cent of what's needed. So we can only keep our fingers crossed for every competitor that they achieve something even on half this scale. Reducing CO2 is just an incredibly tough challenge for us all.