Sucking up CO2

Founded: 2019

HQ: Palo Alto, CA

Capturing CO2 with electrons.

Big Picture

Carbon dioxide makes up just 0.04% of air, which is why capturing it directly from the atmosphere is so hard. Strictly chemical processes are well understood, but most require serious energy to pass enough air through “carbon-sticky” chemicals and then unbind them with heat. Advances in electrochemistry and material science point to simpler processes driven primarily by electricity.

How it Works

Holy Grail’s direct air capture system removes CO2 from ambient air without any heat or pressure, just clean electricity. This dramatically simplifies the system architecture required, allowing Holy Grail to build compact modules that can be stacked together. The product of their process is permanently stored CO2 in a stable carbon-contained solid.

Unfair Advantage

Their approach is radically simple, slashing the heat and energy requirements typically associated with direct air capture. This leads to a very low minimum cost for stripping CO2 from the air. The tech lends itself well to a modular, manufacturable cell that could just as easily scrub CO2 at a household level as at an industrial site with cells piled on top of one another, and many use cases in between.


250

sq. inch cell

captures a US household’s annual emissions

NUNO PEREIRA CEO & CO-FOUNDER

Nuno, an industrial designer with a background in chemistry and materials science, built Holy Grail’s stack components from scratch.


Introducing Holy Grail

Medium

Holy Grail raises $2.7M seed fund to create modular carbon capture devices

TechCrunch

CO2 separation and transport via electrochemical methods

Journal of Electrochemical Society

Electrochemical separation and concentration of <1% carbon dioxide from nitrogen

Journal of Electrochemical Society