Shipping goods across the oceans is a huge contributor to climate change, producing about 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions each year.
And since batteries still can’t propel massive vessels over thousands of miles, it’s also one of the trickiest sectors to clean up.
Pierre Forin, 30, initially worked on this problem at the research arm of TotalEnergies, the French energy giant. But in 2021, he moved to Caltech to collaborate with a pair of professors based there and at the University of Southern California, to develop lab-scale reactors to test and tinker with a system for trapping and storing away much of a ship’s carbon dioxide pollution.
The following year, the trio raised $3.5 million and co-founded Calcarea, a Caltech spinout named after an ocean sponge, a reference to the technology’s ability to soak up carbon dioxide emissions.
The company’s technology directs the ship’s exhaust through seawater, which forms carbonic acid. That mixture then runs through a bed of limestone to create bicarbonate ions, mimicking the chemistry that already locks away vast amounts of carbon in the oceans.
Forin, the company’s chief technology officer, says the resulting water can be harmlessly released into the ocean along the voyage. That sidesteps much of the energy requirements and costs of compressing and storing carbon dioxide, which other approaches to capturing and sequestering the greenhouse gas rely on.
The company is also exploring the possibility of using the same technology to capture and dispose of carbon dioxide from factories on land, like cement plants near coastlines.