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Recently, a team from a company called Charm Industrial has been working on the edge of Kansas cornfields, transporting rolled bales of stem, leaves, bark and tassel onto a semi-trailer.
Inside, a mechanism called a pyrolyzer uses high temperatures in the absence of oxygen to break down plant material into a mixture of biochar and bio-oil. This oil is pumped into EPA regulated deep wells or salt caverns used for industrial waste. Charm says it solidifies there, trapping carbon for thousands to millions of years that would otherwise return to the air when farmers burn crop residues or leave them to rot.
This is how the San Francisco startup has been carbon sequestering for the past two years working for companies including Microsoft. Late last year, it announced that the process had safely locked in around 5,500 tonnes of CO2 equivalent so far, claiming it was the largest amount of long-term decarbonization ever achieved.
But there are still many questions about how reliable, scalable and economical this approach will be. Read the full story.
—James Shrine
How does Charm Industrial hope to use the crops to reduce steel emissions?
Charm Industrial is also investigating whether the same bio-oil can be used to reduce emissions from iron and steel production, and is pursuing a new technical route to clean up the most polluted industrial sector.
The approach could be good news for companies compelled to explore cleaner production methods amid higher emissions and increasingly stringent climate policies. Read the full story.
—James Shrine
must read
I scoured the internet for today’s most entertaining/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Texas gunman detailed his plans in Facebook messages before shooting
Meta said the direct messages were not discovered after the tragedy. (WP $)
+ Repeated mass murder is an American problem. (New Yorker $)
+ AI-powered metal detectors are a controversial solution. (WP $)
+ Three false claims about the shooting are circulating on the Internet. (NYT $)
2 Twitter fined for sharing users’ phone numbers
It allowed numbers and email addresses to inform targeted ads. (Variation)
+ Elon Musk needs more money if he wants to buy the company. (FT $)
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