- Mobile carbon capture
for semi-trucks was thought to be impossible until now. - Here we go!
Up to 1,000 RPM. - That sound you're hearing is mobile carbon capture
in action. The device on the back
of this semi-truck is removing 80% of the carbon from its exhaust. And that's a huge deal. - Every year, semi-trucks create
339 million metric tons of CO2— that's 5% of the entire
U.S. carbon footprint— but we have to keep these trucks running because they're an essential
part of our supply chain. It's just this massive problem. And we don't have
a good solution to decarbonize these trucks. - We're building something
that's never existed before, so we have to push
ourselves to show people just how far this could go. We have the chance here
to make a massive swing in CO2 emissions from
positive to negative. - Detroit has given
its country a lot: most notably, in transportation. The automotive industry
started here in 1901. 12 years later, Henry Ford invented the
moving assembly line. They laid the first mile of concrete highway, painted the first road lines, and even installed the first modern
three-colored traffic light. And today, it's on
the brink of yet another first
for transportation. - Right behind me, this is
the first of its kind mobile carbon capture system. The first ever to be deployed to commercialization
anywhere in the world. - Carbon capture is
getting a lot of attention in the news lately as a potential solution for climate change. There are two main approaches to capturing carbon: companies like Climeworks built facilities that suck CO2 out of the air. This is known as
'direct air capture.' Another way is to capture
it right at the source, before it even enters the air. This is called
'carbon capture and storage.' Remora is taking this approach, but making it mobile. - Semi-trucks are one of
the very hardest to decarbonize
sectors in the U.S. because we rely on semi-trucks to move almost every good
that we see around us. And unfortunately, semi-trucks are really,
really hard to electrify. - Everyone has been told
that electric vehicles are zero emissions. This is the ultimate greenwashing that we're seeing right now. You have to charge them,
you have to build them, you have to recycle them— and none of those things are
actually figured out or green. And as a vehicle gets bigger, the batteries have to
get significantly heavier just to carry their
own battery weight, so the efficiencies come down drastically. - Remora believes
their solution is the best option for trucks
on the roads, right now. - We can retrofit onto
existing diesel trucks. We don't have to replace every single one of the 2 million trucks
on the road in the U.S. You know, we don't need
to overhaul the grid, build out all-new
charging stations. What's exciting here is that it can start decarbonizing trucks now. - Here's how it works: the device connects to a truck's tailpipe where it conditions the
exhaust by removing water and cooling it down. Then, the
conditioned exhaust gets pushed through a
filter made of 'zeolite beads' which have
microscopic pores where carbon dioxide molecules get physically stuck. Oxygen, nitrogen, and other harmless gases
are the wrong size, so they flow right out
into the air, leaving the carbon behind. Once the filter is full
of carbon, it's heated and pressurized, causing
the zeolite pores to release the CO2 molecules. That pure stream of CO2 is compressed into
pressure vessels onboard the truck. - The really cool part is that we're using heat from the truck's exhaust to heat up the absorbent bed, which means that the system
is extremely energy efficient, and we have multiple absorbent beds. So we can capture CO2 in one while we're
regenerating another. And then we can switch
back and forth. - But turning that science
into reality and actually building this
mobile carbon capture device from scratch, is far from easy. - There you go.
- There you go. - So how many are you guys typically making then? - Well, this is our,
this is our first. The greatest challenge
is the fact that nobody makes parts
to capture CO2 on a moving vehicle. - The way these beads
are distributed is vital to our system. We will definitely need
to get to the point where it's not multiple
people over multiple days doing this one layer at a time. So a lot of the equipment
that we need for our system is not designed for this scale, and absolutely not designed
for this application. - If the weld bead is,
you know, right here we'll never get a good seal. We're putting
ourselves at risk. - Yeah, yep, yep. - For some of this equipment, we just know it's never
been done before, so a lot of it is very
much an iterative process. We learn something, quite
often we break something, and then we try again. - In other words, a lot of this is being
figured out as they go. - So this motor is actually designed to go on like small,
propelled airplanes. We had some stuff
get modified, so we're trying to see
why or where it broke. - It's a big process to
get this device installed on a vehicle. - The device gets installed in
a small gap behind the cab. - Most vehicles do
have this space, but we have to constantly
validate that it will fit, that the weight will get
distributed correctly between the axles. - The device doesn't affect cargo space, but at 5,000 pounds, inevitably, it lowers fuel efficiency. - So the biggest challenge
is really making sure that we're not gonna
make the vehicle unsafe. - Most of my subsystems are
welded underneath this truck, and bolted onto the frame. And if any of those fall
off, we're in big trouble. - This first device is
truly built by hand— so the team must
rigorously test it, as some parts are
prone to fail. - You can see a bump
on the alternator. - Yeah, a little.
- Better than you can here. What was that? - The truck turned off, right?
- Oh, the truck turned off. - The way the
installation works, is that we essentially drop the
device onto the frame rails, and bolt into
existing bolt holes that are designed for
aftermarket retrofits. Other than that, we install
a couple other systems and different parts
to the truck. We install a little
screen inside the cab— and then we're good to go. - One device
captures 70% to 80% of the truck's
carbon emissions. That's 200 tons of
carbon dioxide every year— and that's just one truck. - It's just crazy how big
a semi-truck engine is. I think, you know, it's just
so different from a car, and you get like 200 tons
of CO2 coming out of this engine every year. It's just, it's a crazy scale
that we have to operate at. - A single truck fitted
with Remora's device can capture and store up
to 1,200 pounds of CO2. Once the tank is full,
the device shuts off, and exhaust passes through
the system as normal until the driver can
stop and offload the CO2. - CO2 offloading works by pulling a truck up to a tank just like this— they're a lot bigger at a customer site. It only takes about
15 minutes, and it's the equivalent
of reverse fueling. After you connect the truck, the CO2 will be pumped into
this tank, stored here, and then we can distribute
that to our network of CO2 buyers. - Remora actually owns the CO2 captured by their devices, and requires it to be offloaded
into their own tanks. Remora then splits any revenue or tax credits from the sale or
sequestration of that CO2 with their customers. - The market for CO2 around
the world is actually massive. It's a 7.7 billion-dollar market, and we are not meeting
the world's demand. There are regular shortages
of CO2 all around the world. The market is also
growing incredibly fast. There are all these cool,
new companies using CO2 in new ways to produce fuels,
laundry detergent, vodka, plastics, you name it— someone is probably
making it out of CO2. - While these innovative uses for CO2 provide sustainable
options for sellers, they're a small fraction
of the market. One of the largest industrial uses of CO2 is, unfortunately, a controversial one: Enhanced oil recovery is a process where pressurized CO2 is pumped into existing
oil reservoirs, where it can push up
to 60% more oil than other recovery methods. So for oil and gas companies,
it unlocks more oil and more revenue. But Remora says they'll
never sell their CO2 for use in oil extraction. - If we can't find someone
to utilize the carbon, we will pump the
CO2 underground into an EPA-certified well, where it's gonna be stored
for thousands of years. There's lots of monitoring
in place to make sure the CO2 is staying put, and this is by far the
best way to make sure we're not letting CO2
back into the atmosphere. - While storing captured
CO2 underground is the best way
to sequester it, it doesn't generate revenue for the owner the same way selling it does. But the federal government
does provide a tax credit to incentivize
underground sequestration. - So what I tried to do was work backwards from July 26th,
which is the date that the Allison testing
is gonna commence. We're gonna ship the truck out that day. - Remora says they already have all the needed approvals from the Department of
Transportation and the EPA. Ryder, the world's
largest trucking company, is Remora's first customer. Their first truck with the
device will hit the road in September of 2022. The general model is that
Remora sells 10 devices to a company for a pilot:
being the inaugural pilot, Ryder is starting
with one device. - We are just getting
our first pilot started in the next couple months. Trucking companies are
facing a lot of pressure from shippers
to find some way to reduce their
carbon emissions. So trucking companies are
looking at the alternatives, and Remora, in many cases,
is the best solution. We retrofit onto
their existing trucks. We actually deliver
them revenue every year. So the device not only
pays for itself, but starts generating
a new revenue stream. So this is a really
exciting time for mobile carbon capture because there are 2 million
semi-trucks in the U.S., so we've got our
work cut out for us, but even just as we get on
the thousands of trucks, we're gonna be capturing millions of tons of carbon dioxide every year. It's pretty staggering
the potential impact here. - Is Remora's device
merely a stop-gap measure to buy us time until better
battery technology evolves? Whatever happens, it seems
their device, if scaled, could have a large impact on decarbonizing regional
freight distribution. - We need an
all-of-the-above approach. We can't afford to
just bet everything on a single silver bullet. We need to develop a lot of
different solutions in parallel, and then we can figure
out which one's best. One of the single
biggest challenges is going to be scaling up
our manufacturing operation to meet the demand that
we're seeing from fleets. - The biggest challenge with
convincing truck companies to use this technology is honestly that they can't order a
thousand of them tomorrow. - The future of carbon capture
is modular and repeatable. So what that means is,
just like solar panels, you wanna build
carbon capture that can be churned out
off an assembly line over and over again. We're taking carbon capture and shrinking it down so
that instead of it being this sprawling
construction project, it's this really concentrated
manufacturing challenge. And that's how we're
gonna get carbon capture to be cheap enough, to be
a really important part of the decarbonization solution. - I've always had the
mindset of leaving something, like, better than you found it. And that's what I see
that we're doing here. We see there's a problem. Everybody knows
it's a problem. If you're making
a company right now, it should be to solve
that problem in any way that you can. And the only way we're
gonna make a dent in it is if there's hundreds of
companies like this one, that are all tackling
the same huge challenge. - This is where we say, 'Do
not try this at home, okay?' - I mean, you shouldn't
do this at home, 'cause why would you
have a compressor at home?
