NeoCarbon, a Berlin-based Direct Air Capture (DAC) company, has successfully concluded a pilot project in collaboration with Kurita Water Industries at their R&D center in Germany.
The pilot, operational from July to December 2024, demonstrated NeoCarbon's ability to transition its technology from laboratory to real-world conditions. By leveraging Kurita's waste heat streams, NeoCarbon efficiently captured CO₂ from ambient air with a purity of up to 99%.
NeoCarbon's technology capitalizes on low-temperature waste heat streams, like those provided by Kurita Water's cooling towers, to power its DAC processes. Because the unit arrives containerized and connects to standard utility interfaces, it was installed plug & play, without the host site building anything new.
"The partner doesn't need to rebuild all the infrastructure," said Dr. Carsten Stobbe, Innovation Project Manager at Kurita Water.
This project validated the technical feasibility of running a DAC module at Kurita's site. Building on the result, NeoCarbon and Kurita aim to scale this technology in the coming period.
For NeoCarbon, the conclusion of its first industrial pilot marks the moment the technology proved itself where it matters: at a real site, on real waste heat, in autonomous operation through a full change of seasons.