UP Catalyst, a technology development and production company based in Estonia that directly utilizes CO2 to produce eco-friendly carbon materials, has recently completed an additional seed round of financing amounting to €2.36 million. This follows an initial seed round of €4 million raised in December last year, bringing the total seed funding to €6.36 million.
The funds will accelerate the construction of its first industrial-scale pilot production facility. With this investment, the company aims to expedite the development of a pilot reactor for commercialization, targeting the processing of 100 tons of carbon dioxide annually to produce 27 tons of advanced carbon materials such as graphite, carbon nanotubes, carbon black, and hard carbon. It is reported that this technology, based on molten salt electrolysis, not only aims to achieve parity with traditional carbon source products but also significantly reduce the carbon footprint associated with the production of battery raw materials.
Image source: TechEU
This round of financing was supported by the leading private investment company in Central and Eastern Europe, Warsaw Equity Group, and the Estonian national fund SmartCap, funded by the EU's NextGeneration EU, which also participated in the previous seed round. Other investment institutions include Extantia, Sunly, Little Green Fund, Scottish Baltic Invest, and UniTartu Ventures.
Arvin Khanchandani, Investment Manager at Warsaw Equity Group, commented that supporting UP Catalyst aligns perfectly with Warsaw Equity Group's mission to invest in breakthrough technologies to combat climate change. Transforming industrial carbon dioxide emissions into key carbon-based raw materials that Europe is severely lacking will be a game-changer.
UP Catalyst claims that in terms of the production process, the carbon footprint per ton of graphite is only 0.07 tons of CO2 equivalent, which is 20 times lower than traditional graphite production; the carbon footprint per ton of carbon nanotubes (CNT) is 0.7 tons of CO2 equivalent, which is 242 times lower than the emissions from traditional chemical vapor deposition (CVD) methods.
Dr. Gary Urb, CEO of UP Catalyst, said, "By 2030, the EU will need 3 million tons of carbon materials for electric vehicle power batteries. Although it is possible to utilize 11 million tons of CO2 through existing technologies, the EU is currently mainly investing in underground mineral mining and importing fossil-based materials from China. However, now that we have the technology ready, we just need to scale up the investment. By 2030, we can utilize at least 200,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually.’
UP Catalyst will move into a new commercial-scale production plant located next to the Tallinn waste-to-energy plant, which will allow UP Catalyst to directly obtain carbon dioxide raw materials in the future. This new plant is the third generation of UP Catalyst's factory, with a production capacity ten times higher than the current second-generation pilot scale plant, marking an important milestone in the construction of a commercial reactor device.
TechEU stated that this innovative approach not only reduces the EU's dependence on imported fossil fuels but also provides industrial partners with a way to utilize carbon dioxide emissions, potentially reducing the need to purchase allowances from the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) or alleviating the burden of carbon tax.
