Don’t Expect to Fix the Climate From a Cushy Office 

Building climate tech isn’t like building software. Not even close.

You can’t troubleshoot a first-of-its-kind carbon capture device by A/B testing from a comfy office or by sending out user surveys. Of course, you can model a lot of carbon capture on a computer, or even do a whole Ph.D. on it. (I actually did.) All that’s cool, but none of it matters unless you can show that your tech works in the real world.

My heroes, Seabound founders Alisha Fredriksson and Roujia Wen, did just that. After modeling all the theoretical physics and engineering on a modern-day mega computer in East London, they jumped on an ocean freighter in Turkey and traversed some of the world’s most contested waters to test their proprietary carbon capture technology. (Spoiler alert: it passed with flying colors.)

Imagine that two-and-a-half-month offsite. No, seriously. Try to imagine it:

You start by prepping for two weeks in a Turkish shipyard during the hottest summer on record. (There’s nothing like welding inside a shipping container in 110 F heat to remind you why you’re racing to decarbonize shipping.) 

After another two weeks of waiting for your delayed ship to arrive, you finally hop on, hit the water, and start testing. 

Begin your day with a team standup in your conference room that doubles as the officers’ smoking lounge. 

Go check diagnostics. Avoid getting hit by 2-ton crane hooks swinging around. 

Call your engineers back in London for help with a gas analyzer. Find out you have no signal today. 

Become your own electrical engineer to fix said analyzer. 

Ask the armed guards about pirate sightings.

Learn to ignore the sound of distant gunfire. 

After 20 hours of this madness, take a nap, wake up, and do it all again. 

For 42 days. 

Not your everyday QA/QC, huh?

Bon voyage, CO₂.

So why would the team brave threats to life and limb, not to mention some severe sleep deprivation? Because ships need to decarbonize ASAP. If shipping were a country it would be the sixth worst emitter in the world. But what about clean fuels, you ask? Well, even if clean ship fuels were here today — which they’re decidedly not — no ship owner would replace their engines to accommodate them. Ships on the water today still have at least 15 years of life in them, so the pressure’s on to figure out a way to decarbonize today’s fleets now.

The obvious answer, then, is carbon capture for ships. But exactly how you do it? That’s been a lot less obvious.

Past attempts have tried to copy-paste carbon capture designed for power plants onto ships. Turns out, ships aren’t power plants. Power plants don’t have to move through ever-changing environmental conditions at 20 knots. And unlike ships, power plants have plenty of space for pumps, compressors, vacuum chambers…the list goes on. Plus, most ports can’t even handle offloading pure CO_2.

Seabound knew that to make carbon capture work for ships, it had to be purpose-built for ships, with simple, durable equipment that was easy to source, easy to install, and easy to operate.

So Seabound developed an elegantly simple, incredibly effective, never-been-seen-before carbon capture device. Here’s how it works. The device diverts ship exhaust to a tank that contains calcium oxide, which chemically reacts with the CO₂ in the exhaust to create calcium carbonate. In plain English: They turn CO₂ into chalk. Then, crews can just cart it off the ship like any other cargo. In a breakthrough aha moment, they realized that all the CO₂ processing — the big stumbling block for previous maritime carbon capture attempts — can be done on land, where the infrastructure already exists.

With prototype in hand, not to mention a little bravery, they circumnavigated the Middle East to test their creation in that rigorous pilot run adventure we talked about earlier. Their trials averaged about 80% capture efficiency for CO₂ and 90% for sulfur.

Now, off the back of their successful test, Alisha, Roujia, and team are building a bigger, better version of their tech, with expected capture rates of 95%. Due out in 2025, they’re already signing up major shipowners for pre-orders.

Climate breakthroughs happen in the trenches. Jump in.

None of this could have been done from their lab in London, let alone from an office park somewhere. To make these kinds of climate breakthroughs, you can’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. You might have to go without creature comforts for a while. You might even have to cruise through a war zone. But that’s the commitment it takes to remake the world’s biggest industries and do some serious good for the planet.

If this sounds like the kind of work that makes you excited to get up in the morning, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us or check out the open roles at our startups.

Of course, if you happen to be a shipowner and want to get ahead of the emissions regulations coming your way, get in touch with Seabound.

We like to think we’re pretty good at painting pictures, but if you’re more into moving pictures, take a few minutes to watch this incredibly powerful Seabound documentary. It might just be the push you need to jump in the climate trenches.

(Video and photos by Mark Potter and Storyhouse Media)