BY Courtney DuChene
Sep. 10, 2024
In the upper floors of the Terminal Commerce Building on North Broad hums a bulky, silver machine. With two silver ducts sticking out on either side, the device is about as long as a refrigerator laid down horizontally. The contraption looks like any other big-building thingamabob you might find tucked away in a basement or utility closet. But looks can be deceiving: This piece of HVAC tech is a high-tech carbon capsule — and it wants to help solve our urban emissions crisis.
Worldwide, buildings account for 37 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions. Carbon dioxide (Co₂) emissions comprise 81 percent of all greenhouse gas, a primary cause of climate change. Philly’s carbon emissions totaled 20 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2019 — the most recent year for which data was available.
There are many ways to make existing buildings greener: Add garden roofs and solar panels, improve insulation, install energy-efficient lighting, doors and windows (including windows that open), use low-VOC surfaces and furnishings, harvest rain. But the biggest way to reduce a building’s carbon footprint — and energy costs? Improve its air.
That’s the goal of Philly-based Carbon Reform: Build systems to permanently sequester Co₂ from the air.
Nick Martin and Jo Norris’s four-year-old company combines air filtration technology with a device that removes carbon dioxide and transforms it into small pellets of calcium carbonate — also known as limestone. The filters also remove volatile organic compounds (VOCs), viruses like Covid and other pollutants, so the air is cleaner, too.
Once the air has been cleansed, the capsule reintroduces it into the HVAC system, so businesses don’t have to pull in as much outside air for heating and cooling, saving them money on their energy bills. And when companies use less energy, they also emit less carbon.
Martin and Norris estimate a single carbon capsule can remove 10 tons of CO₂ annually. Installing devices like this one in dozens — or hundreds — of buildings throughout a city could dramatically reduce that city’s carbon footprint. That could be huge in the fight against climate change.
Carbon Reform just signed up a personal care and cosmetics client based in Philadelphia. They’re currently in talks with the City about getting their technology into municipal buildings, whose operations make up 75 percent of the City’s total emissions. This year, Carbon Reform partnered with Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) to install a unit at one of the energy company’s facilities. If the program is successful, it could spread to BGE’s customers or other Exelon companies — like Philly’s PECO.
Figure: Co-founders Nick Martin (left) and Jo Norris.
Lest you think the materials or inner workings of a building are what pollute its air, Norris will set you straight. “Co₂ primarily comes from people,” she says. “If we can remove that contaminant and also address the other contaminants, then we can provide energy savings.”
Norris studied sustainability first as an undergrad at Hofstra University and later at Columbia University, where she earned a masters degree in climate and society. By then, she’d become disillusioned by how much climate work was tied to politics. She feared working on an important project in her field — and losing her job (and her mission) when a new elected official took office. So, she decided to focus on something slightly more bipartisan: environmental technology.
“It’s for the good of everyone,” Norris says. “And so it’s possible to make a lot of progress in this field without having to rely on funding sources and things like that, which a lot of the environmental field really depends on, that are really tied into changes in policy and government.”
Like Norris, Martin had long been involved with green technologies. He studied chemical engineering at the University of Delaware, worked for startups that installed solar arrays in Africa and even earned a grant from the State Department to continue some of that work in Nigeria. (His trip was cut short due to Covid). While in Africa, he saw the impact of diesel generators and other gas and coal powered energy systems. Oftentimes, the generators would be near kitchens, water sources, or other domestic spaces where women tended to be working.
“All this dirty pollution is getting into their lungs that’s affecting their health, and it’s primarily affecting the women,” Martin says.
The two met at a networking event at the Delaware Innovation Space. Norris was a PhD student studying material science at the University of Delaware. There, they started talking about these problems and sketching out ideas on their notes apps. Carbon Reform was born.
Norris researched direct air carbon capture technologies as a masters student and, though her PhD research was focused on biodegradable polymers, it was still in the back of her mind when she met Martin. Carbon capture is often used at large industrial facilities or power plants to remove Co₂ directly from the air. The process works by sending air through a chemical or physical filter that separates carbon from other molecules and traps it. Then, the system transforms it into a material that permanently sequesters the carbon, or people bury it, so it no longer warms the atmosphere.
In launching Carbon Reform, Norris and Martin wanted to make a tool that addressed both indoor air quality and carbon emissions. What they found when talking to potential customers was that companies didn’t care as much about the carbon removal, but, amid the pandemic, many were concerned about the effects indoor air quality had on their employees’ health. They also wanted technologies that could help reduce their energy bills.
Back then, “either they’d been personally impacted by [Covid] or they knew somebody who has,” says Martin. “Climate, because it’s this existential threat and not everybody experiences it the same way, you don’t feel personally tied into it as much.”
Over the course of 14 months, Martin and Norris engaged a research and development team to build seven iterations of three different products: the carbon capsule, the carbon canister and the carbon console. The canister is a standalone air filter that removes carbon for spaces up to 1,500 square feet. The console monitors indoor air quality. The capsule serves spaces up to 20,000 square feet; larger commercial buildings could install multiple to serve their whole space.
“We don’t have 20 years to come up with an elegant solution. We need to find climate solutions now,” Martin says.
Figure: A carbon capsule from Carbon Reform.
The carbon capsule connects to a building’s HVAC system via two ducts on either side of the device. The ducts pull air from the building where it then passes through a series of filters — two MERV filters to clear pollutants and pathogens, a VOC filter, and one that removes CO₂ — and a UV chamber that kills bacteria and viruses like Covid.
The machine then converts CO₂ into limestone pellets and stores them in a chamber. You can watch the limestone pellets collect through a window on the machine; they’re about the size of a dime and look like breath mints. As Norris and Martin explain how the machine works, I observe that the visualization could make the carbon removal seem “concrete” for property owners.
“Literally,” Norris says. “It’s used in concrete.”
Last year, M Davis, an industrial construction company that has done a lot of work with green technologies, including helping to bring microplastic filtration systems to Atlantic City’s water treatment plant, partnered with Carbon Reform to test the capsule at the company’s Kennett Square facility. M Davis manufactured six, small prototype carbon canister units for Carbon Reform.
“It’s a lot of fun seeing these types of technologies go from lab to product,” says John Gooden, current COO and former president of M Davis. “It did function as designed.”
Carbon Reform then picks up the limestone pellets produced by the sequestered carbon and sells them for use in other products: not just concrete, but also marble and other construction materials, toothpaste and Tums. This keeps the carbon dioxide they capture from being re-released into the atmosphere, Norris says.
Figure: Pellets produced by Carbon Reform’s capture capsule.
Companies lease the capsule and other tools from Carbon Reform and they install and maintain it. That can be appealing, Norris and Martin say, because repairing and maintaining HVAC equipment can be costly. This way, customers get the benefits of the tech, without the headache of caring for equipment. They call it a hardware as a service business model.
“We’re designing the actual hardware to be the most straightforward installation possible,” Norris says. “You wheel it in and you install the ducts, which is just a couple hour process.”
The pilot unit at Carbon Reform’s North Broad headquarters has reduced HVAC-related energy spend by more than 40 percent since it was installed earlier this year. The company is in the process of studying how much carbon an average capsule and all their capsules cleanse from the air in a given year. (Sharing that data is tricky, they say, because that information belongs to customers, not the company.) They hope to work with clients to release a study and put a dashboard on their site that tracks the amount of CO₂ they’ve removed by the end of next year. They believe releasing info on energy savings will attract more customers. Right now, they report they’re in the final proposal stage with ten major customers, including some in Pennsylvania.
“If we can appeal to people’s wallets, then we can get them to implement these solutions and ultimately improve not only their day-to-day experience, but also their financial situation,” Norris says.
Carbon Reform offers two products in addition to the carbon capsule. The carbon canister is a standalone air filter that removes CO₂, VOCs and other pathogens from air. Like the capsule, it stores carbon-converted-limestone. It’s not connected to an HVAC system though, so companies won’t see energy savings. It’s designed for smaller spaces, those up to 1,500 square feet, where a larger unit like the capsule wouldn’t fit.
Carbon Reform is not yet profitable. Norris and Martin say that’s pretty common for early stage, deep technology hardware companies. The business is growing, however. They currently have 11 employees and Norris hopes to grow the team to 20 over the next two years. So far, they’ve raised $5 million in venture capital funding over a series of rounds. They’re in the midst of another fundraising round. Although their operations team is headquartered in Philly, their research and development arm is in Delaware.
Azolla Ventures, a Boston-based venture capital firm with a focus on climate startups, is one of Carbon Reform’s investors. Co-founder and general partner Amy Duffuor says Azolla was impressed with Carbon Reform in part because, unlike many direct air capture companies, the business model doesn’t rely on carbon credits.
Under a carbon credit system, a government will cap emissions for a particular industry, and then companies will buy credits for the amount of CO₂ they release into the atmosphere from a direct capture company, which will then remove that same amount of carbon. Companies can also choose to reduce their emissions in the absence of government regulation via the voluntary carbon credit market. The system has been criticized because some companies oversell credits while others may sell credits for things like planting trees, which can be damaged, reducing the overall amount of carbon they can absorb.
Carbon Reform declined to share how much each unit costs to install and operate. They said the price varies based on the size of the building and the current HVAC system, so each client requires a custom quote. They do say a capsule is typically cheaper than other commercial HVAC technology upgrades, which range in price from about $20 to $30 per square foot. They add that within one to two years, the capsule pays for itself in energy savings. Researchers have found that direct air capture technology costs between $600 to $1,000 to remove one ton of CO₂, though those prices are expected to drop to between $230 to $540 per ton as these technologies scale.
The capsule has been at BGE’s Spring Garden facility in downtown Baltimore since earlier this summer and they held a ribbon cutting to unveil the unit in July. Ed Hirsh, manager of BGE’s Path to Clean program, appreciates that the unit cleans the air of viruses and other pollutants whilst scrubbing carbon from it. It’s a partnership that could have ripple effects. Exelon has said it intends to reduce emissions company wide by 50 percent before 2030 — and achieve net-zero by 2050. If BGE likes their tech, Norris and Martin hope the company promotes it to their client base and to other Exelon companies, including PECO.
“This is really an energy savings value proposition with carbon capture on side,” says Azolla’s Duffuor. “I’d love to see tens of hundreds of thousands of their units in buildings across the United States.”
Correction: A previous version of this post included pricing for a residential HVAC upgrade. A commercial HVAC upgrade costs about $20 to $30 per square foot.
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