Frontier, a organization backed by Stripe, Google and Meta, announced Tuesday that it will pay startup arbor energy to remove 116,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide by the end of the decade.
With the agreement, Arbor will help build the first commercial-scale power plant in southern Louisiana, discarding biomass and generating electricity for the data center. At the same time, the resulting CO2 is isolated and shipped via a pipeline to be buried underground.
“We can sell it as two products,” Arbor co-founder and CEO Brad Hartwig told TechCrunch. “We sell carbon-free base load energy and net [carbon] removal. ”
Twofer is inherent to a technology called BICR or a technology called biomass carbon removal and storage.
“One of the great things about BICRS is that the plants are pulling CO2 down, so you get the captured portion for free.
Although the burning of biomass is older than human civilization, Arbor gives this practice a space-age twist. Hartwig, who previously worked at SpaceX, was inspired by Rocket Turbomachinery in the development of Arbor’s power plant. The company’s first facility generates between 5 and 10 megawatts of electricity. Hartwig said the company is working to steadily improve production volumes.
At power plants, waste biomass is first converted to syngas. The startup had previously intended to use ready-made gas agents, but they never sniffed any of them, so they developed their own. In gasifiers, supercritical CO2 (supercritical CO2, which is carbon dioxide under huge pressure) supplied from the power plant itself helps dissolve the biomass and releases hydrogen and carbon monoxide gas.
Syngas and CO2 then head to the combustion chamber. In this chamber, Syngas is burned using pure oxygen. This produces water vapor, heat, and more carbon dioxide. (The presence of CO2 in the combustion chamber is due to design and Heartwig helps to ease the temperature so that the metal in the machine does not melt.)
The hot gas is then fed through the turbomatinee to generate electricity. Most of the CO2 is converted into pipelines, and the pipeline is transported for permanent storage, but some of it returns to gasoline.
Hartwig previously appropriately described the power plant as a “vegetarian rocket engine.”
The entire system captures 99% of the CO2 released by combustion. This is much higher than competing methods. Also, this process removes carbon from the atmosphere as it burns biomass.
Bebbington said Frontier estimates that between 1 and 5 gigatons of waste biomass is available each year. However, not all biomass is created equally. Some may need to transport longer distances. Others may break it down on the farm to fertilize it.
When reviewing carbon removal, “I want to note that we take that into consideration.” She said. “It also requires that every ton provided meet sustainable biomass principles in a very clear way.”
Even if only one gigaton meets these criteria, BICRS and its close cousin, Carbon Capture and Sequestration (BECCS), have many potential to create major dents in future energy needs.
In the case of frontiers, the arbor burns only the biomass and ensures the power plant removes carbon as requested by trade. Frontier previously supported Arbor with pre-purchase agreements.
Arbor power plants can theoretically burn hydrocarbon sources, including natural gas. “The system is specially designed to be fuel-flexible,” Hartwig said.
“BECCS wants to be a major player in data centers, industrial electrification and grid resilience,” Hartwig said. “But if you have new fossil assets built, we hope they all have zero emissions. Let’s capture all of these emissions.”
