Trailblazing the Path to DAC 3.0

The team is currently working on a 10 tCO2/year outside pilot — called Electra 00 — that is set to go live later this year which will demonstrate Phlair’s commercial-sized hydrolyzer stack, integrated with their absorption and unique chemical energy storage concept. Given Phlair’s modular approach, the hydrolyzer stack (shown below) will be the same building block for all of Phlair’s future commercial DAC units — without any additional scale-up necessary on the component level. This step will bring their technology to TRL 6 and be a further derisking point for offtake prospects in their impressive pipeline.

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A rendering of 260 tCO2/y FOAKs (Electra 01 and 02) that will be built in 2025 for pre-purchase customers Frontier/Milkywire and Deep Sky, as part of this round’s financing is shown below. Beyond Electra 01 and 02, Phlair plans to launch its first commercial facility, Dawn, in 2026 to remove 20 ktCO2/y.

Beyond DAC, Phlair’s technology could be cost-effective for CO2 capture from low-concentration point sources, like aluminium production facilities, which the company is actively exploring.

Phlair is EPIC: How the carbon math adds up

From a top-down perspective, the IEA assumes that 1 Gt of DAC is needed by 2050, so with our Extantia projected impact calculations (EPIC) we generally assume that a category-defining company can capture up to 20% of a market. Factoring in plant net removal efficiency and operating factor, this conservatively results in 196 Mt/year in 2050. Of course, if DAC technologies successfully scale up at the right price point, with the abundance of renewable energy available, then the total DAC market for 2050 could be much larger, and thus the overall annual emission reduction potential for Phlair by 2050 would increase as well.

Given the small scale, low net removal efficiency, and TRL of the current technology, we did not factor in an embodied carbon appraisal as it would not be reflective of the technology at scale. We plan to do an embodied carbon assessment (including carbon payback period) for the 260 tCO2/y plant.

We’ve been particularly impressed by Malte, Paul, and Steffen’s complementary skill sets, professionalism, and exceptional execution power on both the product and commercial sides of the business. We are very excited to support the founders and the Phlair team as they scale up their novel electrochemical system at a time when the market pull is clear and continuing to increase!

To learn more about DAC affordability and the rise of DAC 3.0, check out our Medium article published in February 2024.