Fight climate change and end the use of fossil fuels. This is the ambition of a very young start-up in Nairobi, Kenya. Octavia Carbon was born in June 2022 with the goal of capturing carbon dioxide from the air. A technology that extracts CO2 from ambient air which, once filtered, can then be permanently stored underground or reused for different industries. Octavia Carbon intends to offer both options.
From our correspondent in Nairobi,
It is on the edge of Nairobi thatOctavia Carbon set up its factory. Two machines sit proudly there. They are used to recover carbon dioxide from the ambient air. The very last should soon be marketed. Mwangi Kagunyu is one of the engineers. He introduces her.
« There are openings on all four sides, ambient air enters through a fan, then passes through a chemical filter, which for three hours extracts carbon dioxide from the air. Carbon dioxide free air is released. The extracted CO2 is stored in tanks. »
A $30,000 machine
This machine can recover up to four tonnes of CO2 per year which can then be reused for sparkling drinks or to reinforce building materials, for example. A handful of companies in Europe and the United States have already placed orders. The cost of purchase: approximately 30,000 dollars. Octavia Carbon hopes to sell around 100 this year. A starting point for an ambitious project, explains CEO Martin Freimüller.
« By the end of the year, we hope to be able to launch an installation in Kenya that would recover 100 tons of CO2 per year, using electricity produced by geothermal energy. Following the same chemical filtering process, the recovered CO2 will then be purified, mixed with water, then injected under pressure regarding 500 meters into the ground, where it turns into rock and is stored forever. »
An environmental motivation
The process is energy intensive. The choice of Kenya was therefore not insignificant for Octavia Carbon. In 2021, nearly 90% of the country’s electricity production was from renewable sources. For Martin Freimüller, the motivation is above all environmental.
« Our mission as a company is twofold: fight climate change and end fossil fuels. If we continue to emit so much CO2 in the years to come, we will reach the limit for 1.5% warming. We must find ways to reverse this excess, in particular by removing more CO2 from the air than we emit.. »
If the IPCC considers that CO2 capture is now part of the panoply of tools necessary to fight once morest climate change, it is not, however, a miracle solution. The International Energy Agency counts 18 installations in the world that recover around 10,000 tons of CO2 per year while in 2022, global emissions have reached almost 37 gigatons. The priority remains the reduction of emissions.
