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 — 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.
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!
Follow up -- Considering that at some point we'll reach saturation in the amount of buildings we need, and the world population will necessarily stabilize itself due to resource limits, are there other ways to take CO2 out of circulation besides concrete that don't come with the additional emissions of concrete?
For example I believe plants make sugars using CO2 and water? Can we make a ton of sugar (or other environmentally safe molecules) artificially using CO2 and bury it in the desert? (Sorry for my naivity, I'm not a chemist!)
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!
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.
> we believe electrification won't work for long-haul trucking. Bill Gates agrees.
is very different from
> we ... think electrification is going to be trickier for long-haul trucking than for cars
Electrification will be trickier for long-haul trucking than for cars; no one would disagree with that. That doesn't imply that electrification "won't work" for long haul trucking (a statement that many would disagree with).
I hope your system does work, and that it's cost effective! It will allow us to start decarbonizing earlier! But medium to long-term, it's pretty clear (to me at least) that all forms of ground transportation will be battery/electric powered.
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.
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.
It seems like integration with small generators could happen later, though? Perhaps concrete producers or other consumers of CO2 would buy them, and use or sell the electricity.
> At 20 degrees, the average driving range fell by 12 percent when the car’s cabin heater was not used. When the heater was turned on, the range dropped by 41 percent, AAA said.
So the majority of the range loss in cold weather in passenger EVs was due to heating the cabin. Do you think an electric semi would also require 30% of its battery capacity be dedicated for cabin heating in cold weather?
Assuming 2KWh / mile average consumption[1], an EV semi powertrain would be pulling ~120KW continuously from the battery. Even at 90-95% efficiency, there will be 6-12KW of waste heat available in the powertrain, more than enough to heat the cabin in cold weather. Modern EVs actually do scavenge waste heat from the battery and motors for cabin heating[2], unlike the EVs tested in the cited article.
But even without using the available waste heat, a 6KW resistive cabin heater would only use 18KWh over a 3 hour drive. For a cheap passenger EV, this could be 20-40% of the battery, but for a semi with 500 miles of range, 18KWh would only be 1-3% of the battery.
Put more succinctly, the battery in an EV semi would be 5-10x larger than the battery in a passenger EV, but the energy required to heat the cabin will be roughly the same. So the effect of cabin heating on range loss would be 5-10x less on a EV semi than a passenger EV.
I would remove this line from your post: "plus the batteries lose > 40% of their range in cold weather" because I don't think that claim is supported by any source, or by basic logic and math, in the context of a semi truck.
I hope you are right, because that's better for the environment. Independent testing of the Tesla Semi will prove or disprove all these claims. Regardless, the huge point here is that we offer a retrofit solution that solves carbon emissions from trucking now.
> Independent testing of the Tesla Semi will prove or disprove all these claims.
It sounds like you think it is fine to make claims that are unsupported by any evidence, or by basic logic, until a counter-example to your claims is physically available for independent testing. That’s unbelievably disappointing to hear.
"Our device works perfectly in all climates, while electric vehicles lose more than 40% of their range in cold weather, making them impractical for many parts of the world.”
Having this tagline on your website is ignorant if you hadn’t done the math, and intellectually dishonest now that you have.
I agree that the “huge point” of this announcement is the device you’ve created. You just don’t need to resort to misinformation to promote your product.
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.
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.