Arbon has developed a reusable material that captures CO₂ directly from the air in dry conditions and releases CO₂ when the sorbent is wet. This sorbent has exhibited remarkable stability and does not degrade up to 10,000 cycles. It has a high energy-efficiency without consuming heat during regeneration.
FELLOWS
Xiaoyang Shi
Xiaoyang Shi, founder and CEO of Arbon, received his Ph.D. from Columbia University under the supervision of Klaus Lackner. Shi’s research focuses on direct air capture (DAC) of CO₂, and his work has appeared in many journals. Shi’s applied work focuses on the design of humidity swing CO₂ sorbent, a substance that captures CO₂ from the air. This new technology aims to solve the bottleneck of high energy consumption in current DAC technologies.
Xiangkun (Elvis) Cao
Xiangkun (Elvis) Cao is the co-founder of Arbon. He holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Cornell University. Cao received the prestigious Schmidt Science Fellowship to work on integrated carbon capture and utilization at MIT. He served as an Inaugural Impact Fellow at the MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium and landed on Forbes 30 Under 30 list for his work on CO₂ use. Cao left Arbon in January 2024.
TECHNOLOGY
Critical Need
Arbon has developed a reusable material to capture CO₂ directly from the air in a dry condition and release CO₂ when wet. The released high concentration of CO₂ can be used or sequestered.
Technology Vision
Arbon has developed a reusable material to capture CO₂ directly from the air in dry conditions and release CO₂ when wet. Unlike current resource-intensive DAC methods, Arbon’s core moisture swing adsorption technology uses only water. It then releases a high concentration of CO₂ that can be used or sequestered. Further, Arbon’s sorbent has exhibited remarkable stability and does not degrade after 10,000 cycles. It possesses a high energy-efficiency without consuming heat during regeneration, which is considered the most significant bottleneck to obviating the high energy cost of conventional DAC technologies.
Potential for Impact
Arbon’s two-year vision is to aggregate multiple pilots for CO₂ capture in urban environments. With a small footprint of just one cubic meter, each pilot device can capture one ton of CO₂ daily. In the long term, Arbon plans to deploy devices at scale to capture CO₂ at the gigaton level, which will drive down atmospheric CO₂ levels, helping to ameliorate the climate crisis.
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Arbon