We promised in our last blog post to share more about our vision for Direct Air Capture (DAC). Over the course of four blog posts, we’ll explain how our DAC technology works, what makes it unique, and how we plan to scale it up to address climate change.

We started Noya in mid-2020 and have spent most of our time since then building in the lab or sharing what we do with only small groups of investors and partners — starting now, we’re excited to change that.

For Noya to thrive, we need ideas and feedback from everyone in the climate space: engineers, researchers, policy experts, elected officials, industry partners, marketers, and operators. But you can’t provide feedback on something unless it’s been fully explained. Fair point :)

This four-part series will give you a peek under the hood (behind the fan?) of our unique approach to DAC.

Part One will cover our use of monoliths. These are the backbone of our solid sorbent DAC approach. Specifically, we use monoliths made of activated carbon, an electrically-conductive material that unlocks an energy-efficient regeneration pathway. Or, as we like to say, a way to fight carbon with carbon.

Part Two will cover our regeneration process. Once our sorbent is saturated with CO₂, we apply electricity directly to the monoliths, a process known as Joule heating. This electrothermal approach allows us to avoid heat losses incurred when using steam to regenerate.

Part Three will cover the modular nature of our approach. Our projects can be broken down into small component parts, starting with an individual monolith. Many monoliths make up one cartridge, two cartridges make up one module, and many modules go into one contactor array. As such, monolith R&D will allow us to continually optimize our capture process over time.

Part Four will cover our MRV approach. At the end of the day, we’re capturing and removing an invisible gas. To establish and maintain trust with our buyers — and across the CDR industry as a whole — we must measure CO₂ removal and all associated emissions in a rigorous, high-accountability, way. (More on that soon!)

So, first up: monoliths. We have much to share about this humble honeycomb structure, so stay tuned.