AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles to House 100-ton Pilot System
May 2023
Captura is pleased to announce a new partnership with AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles that will further advance ocean-climate solutions. AltaSea’s 35-acre blue economy campus will become home to Captura’s second Direct Ocean Capture pilot system that can capture 100 tons of carbon dioxide from the ocean annually.
This latest system – which was funded by SoCalGas – is a 100x scale-up from our first pilot and has already been operating end-to-end in our lab in Pasadena. We plan to move the system to AltaSea in the coming months to begin ocean field trials.
At AltaSea, our team will conduct a variety of technology development and ocean modeling work to further validate, scale and improve our technology. As an ocean science, business, and education hub, AltaSea also provides the ideal platform for community engagement and industry collaboration across the blue economy ecosystem.
Read the full news release here.
$12M Series A Funding
January 2023
Captura is proud to share the closing of its US$12 million Series A funding round. Led by Equinor Ventures, the financing round is backed by a global cohort of investors that also includes Aramco Ventures, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) through the Caltech Seed Fund, Future Planet Capital, Hitachi Ventures, and mTerra Ventures.
The expertise and experience of this diverse group of investors in areas including engineering, large-scale project deployment, and ocean-based infrastructure will be crucial to Captura’s success in the next phase of our growth. The funding will be a huge boost to Captura’s ongoing research and development initiatives, including driving innovation across our rigorous piloting program, as well as efficiency and lifetime improvements to the electrochemical swing and bi-polar membrane components featured in our technology.
Read the full news release here.
First Pilot Begins Ocean Trials
August 2022
Captura is excited to be starting ocean trials of our carbon removal technology at Caltech’s Kerckhoff Marine Laboratories in Newport Beach, California. Following a proven end-to-end demonstration at Captura’s facility in Pasadena, we are thrilled to now be operating with a continuous flow of ocean water. Capable of removing a ton of CO2 from the atmosphere per year, our first pilot is equipped with sensors and instruments to constantly monitor performance. This pilot system will help Captura continue to drive innovation in our mission to enable large-scale carbon removal via the world’s oceans.
In parallel, Captura is now moving into the next phase of deployment with the assembly of our second pilot, which will have 100 times the capacity of our first.
These pilot plants will serve as real-world demonstrations of the rapidly scalable and deployable potential of our Direct Ocean Capture technology. Using only ocean water and renewable energy to power safe, permanent, and verifiable carbon removal, our unique approach enables high-quality carbon credits at an affordable price.
XPRIZE Milestone Award
April 2022
Captura is proud to have been selected as one of 15 winners of the Carbon Removal XPRIZE Milestone Award.
The XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition was launched to encourage carbon removal innovators to work on tackling the biggest threat facing humanity: fighting climate change and rebalancing Earth’s carbon cycle. This $100M competition, funded by Elon Musk and the Musk Foundation, is the largest incentive prize in history and the XPRIZE Carbon Removal teams represent the largest collection of innovators working on carbon removal.
The submission process was extremely demanding by design, with a field of 1,133 teams narrowed to 287 teams meeting the eligibility criteria for the milestone awards. 70 expert reviewers screened and ranked the inbound proposals for scientific validity, and selected the top 60 teams. Judges went deeper on operations plans, performance data, life cycle analysis and cost estimates in order to ultimately select the top 15 teams taking home the interim $1M Milestone Awards.
