Vycarb, a CO2 removal and storage technology company, has launched a pilot operation in New York City’s East River through the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation’s Yard Labs program.
The pilot aims to demonstrate how the Vycarb system, deployed on the waterfront of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, can enable permanent, low-cost and fully-measured carbon capture, removal, and storage using water and minerals.
The system will remove and store 100 tonnes per year when fully operational.
Vycarb says that because most natural approaches to carbon storage depend on soil and trees, which are vulnerable to changes in the natural environment, they can only reliably store carbon for up to 25 years. Alternative methods can lead to increased nitrous oxide and methane emissions, two powerful greenhouse gasses. Additionally, to ensure carbon credits are accurately reported, they need to be measured—not merely modeled.
Alternative approaches, such as direct air capture, are very expensive because of the high energy and infrastructure requirements to concentrate, transport, and store CO2, making them difficult to deploy at scale, says Vycarb.
Instead, Vycarb’s solution is to convert CO2 in natural water into bicarbonate (HCO3) before it can enter the atmosphere. Oceanic HCO3 is the largest carbon sink on the surface of the planet, and can store carbon for nearly 10,000-100,000 years. Vycarb’s CO2 neutralization system combines high-CO2 water with natural minerals to instantly generate HCO3, preventing the CO2 from entering the atmosphere.
When deployed at scale, the system is expected to enable carbon removal and storage at less than $100/tonne per year. A key technology for reducing costs is the company’s direct measurement sensor technology which quantifies CO2, HCO3, and CO3 in water in real-time. It helps optimize the mineral dissolution reaction to naturally changing CO2 concentrations.
Vycarb says there are no negative consequences on local ecosystems, and by reducing local water acidification (caused by the high CO2 forming carbonic acid), it benefits marine life. Vycarb is using this new pilot as a testbed for independent groups, like AtDepthMRV, to perform additional assessments of the impacts on local waters to confirm that the solution remains beneficial as it scales up.
The pilot launched in the East River follows a previous Vycarb pilot launched last year at The Trust for Governors Island, which has demonstrated the company’s autonomous, real-time measurement and removal of water-based carbon.
In under two years, Vycarb has sold $0.5M in carbon offsets to companies including Stripe and Milkywire, demonstrating strong market demand and differentiation as a fully-measured and permanent carbon offset. Vycarb was also selected by the U.S. Department of Energy as a semi-finalist for a potential first-ever offset purchase by the U.S. government. Recently, Vycarb secured a deal with Rio Tinto to deploy its solution in heavy emitting facilities, leveraging the technology’s unique ability to be distributed to existing facilities, and overcoming infrastructure limits to incumbent carbon storage approaches.