pkrein

Hi HN, author here.

I wanted to address the most common theme in the comments: safety.

The regulatory burdens I've encountered and described were not related to safety requirements. They are procedural questions with no bearing on safety.

Whether an injection well is Class I disposal, Class II oilfield disposal or Class V experimental has no bearing on the (strong and reasonable) safety requirements to protect underground sources of drinking water... the problem is the delay that comes from deciding which class is most appropriate (turns out, Class V experimental).

And ditto, whether a Revoy is a tractor, a trailer, or a converter dolly for the purposes of DMV registration paperwork has no bearing or relation to the (again strong and reasonable) NHTSA FMVSS safety requirements... the problem is the delay on the procedural paperwork.

I think we can all agree that these procedural issues are not "written in blood", but are in fact regulatory bikeshedding that we'd all be better off without.

nothing in hardware is cheap until it scales up. in fact, the cost vs. scale dynamics are well understood, see Wright's Law.

the "huge assumption" is our entire roadmap... and the major things that drive cost-down are: (1) increased carbon yield by integrating existing pyrolysis technology, (2) shrinking transport distances by operating pyrolysis near injection wells, and (3) increased throughput by making our pyrolyzers larger. these take time, but are hardly shooting for the moon.

CO₂ is captured from the atmosphere in biomass as C

C in biomass is converted to C in bio-oil, with relatively small release of CO₂

C in bio-oil is injected deep underground for permanent storage/sequestration

If this process had not happened, the C in the biomass would have been entirely emitted as CO₂ through rotting or burning.

Bio-oil production itself has a small amount of net positive emissions associated with it. We also purchase renewable electricity, renewable diesel, etc. to minimize those emissions. The net carbon negativity comes from the balance of the biomass/bio-oil carbon content ending up permanently sequestered deep underground.

Wildfires.org is doing really awesome work on unblocking and accelerating environmental review and planning for all kinds of wildfire prevention treatments.

Read two comments up. Biochar/ash made from the biomass goes into the soil.

It's tough for building hardware, where the engineers own building their prototype systems. Likely other roles in sales, etc. would go remote sooner.

Want to come show us how it's done? :)

Actually we aren’t burning the biomass, we’re heating it without oxygen (pyrolysis) to create a transportable biomass intermediate called bio-oil. That bio-oil is rich in carbon, molasses-like consistency, and the overwhelming odor of barbecue sauce. Today we primarily pump that bbq sauce underground as carbon removal (Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage - BiCRS), but in the future it could be used for BECCS processes like you outline.