Two California-based companies are partnering to accelerate technology development and industry collaboration to help mitigate climate change.
1. Captura and AltaSea
Captura, a carbon removal company founded at Caltech, and AltaSea, at the Port of Los Angeles, are working together to find innovative measures to clean up the ocean. As part of the partnership, AltaSea’s 35-acre blue economy campus will become home to Captura’s newest ocean carbon removal system that can capture 100 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the ocean annually.
“We’re thrilled to be welcoming Captura and their innovative solution to the AltaSea community,” said AltaSea President & CEO Terry Tamminen. “This is what AltaSea is all about – bringing together key players from across the blue economy to scale ground-breaking technologies, forge new partnerships, and convene important conversations on topics critical to the fight against climate change.”
Captura will use AltaSea’s campus as the site for technology testing, research, and analysis to validate, scale and improve its Direct Ocean Capture (DOC) technology.
“Captura’s technology is progressing rapidly through our piloting program towards large-scale commercial deployment,” said Captura CEO Steve Oldham.
Now, our work with AltaSea means we can further accelerate our technology and monitor how our system interacts with the ocean.
Steve Oldham, Captura CEO
2. Direct Ocean Technology
Captura’s DOC technology leverages the ocean’s natural capacity as a carbon sink to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Powered by renewable energy, the process uses proprietary electrodialysis technology to capture CO2 directly from seawater and deliver it as a measurable stream that can be permanently sequestered or utilized, the press statement explains. When the CO2-depleted seawater is returned to the ocean, it has the capacity to absorb the same quantity of CO2 from the air that was originally removed.
By leveraging the ocean to remove atmospheric CO2, the approach is highly scalable and cost-effective, the California-based companies stated. Captura’s process doesn’t create by-products and it doesn’t add anything to the ocean — it simply removes CO2 that the atmosphere then replaces.
Ocean carbon capture is just one component of a broader portfolio of climate change mitigation strategies and many energy experts maintain that reducing greenhouse gas emissions at their source and transitioning to renewable energy sources remain the most effective and essential means of addressing climate change.
