paulgross

Remora (YC W21) | carbon capture for semi-trucks | Remote US or Detroit, MI | remoracarbon.com

Remora (YC W21) builds a device that captures a semi-truck’s carbon emissions directly from the tailpipe. We sell the CO2 to end-users who can store it away for a long time. We split that revenue with our customers, so the device pays for itself in just a couple years.

We’re looking for all kinds of new team members — from growth to policy to recruiting to all manner of engineers (software, electrical, mechanical, chemical).

We’re also building our leadership team, starting with directors of operations, supply chain/manufacturing, mechanical engineering, R&D, and controls/electronics.

If you want to help build carbon capture for semi-trucks, apply now at remoracarbon.com/jobs.

Absolutely. The main answer is going to be permanent geologic storage in depleted oil wells or saline aquifers, which is widely agreed to be one of the most scalable form of carbon sequestration. We're also hoping to turn the CO2 back into fuel right at the truck stop, so we can put it right back into the trucks!

Absolutely — this technology would work very well for cargo ships, and after we make it work for semi trucks, we plan definitely to scale up to help decarbonize other hard-to-electrify forms of long-haul transport like locomotives and cargo ships.

There's a new technology that allows concrete producers to inject carbon dioxide into concrete. Two of the leading companies in this space are CarbonCure and Solidia.

They aren't - concrete producers, chemical producers, and many other end users actually only need CO2 that's > 90% pure, a bar that we'll very easily clear.

Many concrete producers are using technology invented by CarbonCure and Solidia to inject CO2 into concrete, which makes it stronger. It's one of the most permanent forms of sequestration, so it takes the CO2 out of circulation forever. Right now, these concrete plants don't have the capability to capture their own CO2, which would be a very elegant solution. In the medium term, as that gets built out, we're going to be switching to permanently sequestering our CO2 in depleted oil wells and saline aquifers, rather than selling it to concrete producers. And in the long term, we hope to turn it back into fuel right at the truck stop. So selling to concrete producers is only the first step of our roadmap for CO2 sequestration!

Totally. We'd genuinely love to be wrong - electrification is a great solution where it works! But our team has built battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell class 8 trucks, and our experience suggests they’re decades away from competing for long haul transport (given range, charging time, payload capacity, etc.). Even if that day comes, our solution is a fraction of the cost, works today with existing fleets, and with biofuels, it can make a truck carbon negative! That's something electrification wouldn't be able to achieve even if we did manage to overhaul the world's grid so that it's completely renewable, which we think will take decades, especially in the developing world.

Thanks so much for that feedback. Definitely don't want to lean too heavily on Gates - we just decided to quote him to show that we're not the only ones who think electrification is going to be trickier for long-haul trucking than for cars! We're hearing this from a lot of our early customers as well, and we're definitely planning to share quotes from them as well down the line, once we're able to.

That's a great idea. We've definitely been thinking about partnering with the government, especially with the Biden admin.

This is a super interesting idea. We hadn't thought of this application, but definitely one that we'll consider!

The great thing about truck-sized units is that they can be modular, so we can easily mass produce them. The challenge with stationary units for power plants is that each one has to be custom-designed from the ground up. Plus, you have to put in tons of capital up front for a power plant, whereas our units are very cheap to make. That's why we think mobile carbon capture is the more scalable approach.

Companies like CarbonCure and Solidia are doing new work on technology that allows concrete producers to inject CO2 into concrete, which makes the concrete stronger. It's really exciting technology, and they've already got plants operating around the country.