Capturing carbon, harvesting water
Over two decades as a climate tech investor and entrepreneur, Will Kain focused largely on solutions to water scarcity. Now he's bringing that same concern to the field of Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology.
DAC is seen as a critical component of climate change mitigation. But legacy methods entail high energy and water consumption.
Kain's company, Avnos, has set out to turn that process on its head. Its technology eliminates the use of heat to capture CO2, by using a moisture swing absorbent instead of a thermal absorbent. The process harvests water, rather than consuming it – the water produced is used to drive the CO2 operation. As Kain puts it: "We invert the water paradigm in carbon dioxide removal."
"We've redefined what Direct Air Capture and carbon dioxide removal can be—it's not just removal, it's infrastructure that solves multiple constraints at once, including waste heat, water consumption,and carbon."
Will Kain, founder and CEO, Avnos
Data center potential
Avnos' technology, dubbed Hybrid DAC or HDAC, can run on electricity and makes efficient use of waste heat. This makes it especially promising for use alongside data centers.
"We can take the waste heat from a data center and use it to make our process run more efficiently," Kain explains. "We can then return water back to a cooling loop for the data center. That in turn frees up electrical power capacity for the data center to maximize its compute capacity."
The ability to save heat also offers a potential regulatory advantage, as Europe and other markets seek to curb heat waste in data center developments.
Efficiency generates returns
In financial terms, Kain believes the carbon capture, reduced energy use and additional compute offered by HDAC could see Avnos' data center customers reap returns of up to 30% with payback periods of under three years.
"While bringing about resource efficiency and the value associated with it, we can also deliver really attractive economic returns to our data center partners," he says.
Other use cases include carbon removal solutions for broader industrial decarbonization and delivering low-cost feed stocks for sustainable aviation fuel.
Commercialization plans
HDAC has been piloted at a plant in Bakersfield, California, while Avnos is commissioning a plant at its own New Jersey base.
The company has also launched Project Cedar – an investment of up to $17 million from Shell and Mitsubishi Corporation to build the first commercial-scale HDAC facility at an undisclosed U.S. location. Scheduled to be operational by the end of 2026, Cedar will have a 3,000-ton carbon capture capacity, "and we will make beneficial use of the CO2," Kain promises.
Avnos also has prospects elsewhere in the U.S. and Europe. Meanwhile, it plans to develop high-speed, highly-automated manufacturing capabilities to help it scale activity.
"This will allow us to come up the maturity curve and down the risk and cost curve quite quickly," says Kain.
Avnos is backed by more than $100 million in funding and support from partners including Shell, Mitsubishi Corporation, NextEra Energy, ConocoPhillips, JetBlue Ventures, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Department of Defense. Learn more at www.avnos.com.
