Sometimes insurance is more than just money. Sometimes it’s the gear.
That’s one way to think about direct air capture, a technology that uses machines to extract carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere. The idea has been floating around for years, but interest in it surged following the release of a 2022 report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said DAC, as the technology is known, is critical to achieving net-zero carbon emissions.
Several companies are working to solve this problem, but the obstacles are many.Startups must find suitable places to store CO22 or customer purchases. They also need to reduce the manufacturing and operating costs of the equipment.
One company, AirMyne, is betting its proprietary liquid is the key to overcoming these obstacles.Other companies use liquids to absorb carbon dioxide2 Likewise, but when the gas needs to be released, they have to use high-temperature heat.
High temperature regeneration cycles can be more efficient due to the specific nature of the chemical reactions involved.But such intense heat can be hard to come by, which is why AirMyne developed its liquid to regenerate or release carbon dioxide2using low-temperature heat of only 100–130 degrees Celsius (212–266 degrees Fahrenheit).
AirMyne’s low-temperature heat requirements mean its overall process may be less efficient than high-temperature methods, but co-founder and CEO Mark Cyffka believes it gives his company better opportunities to grow and scale.
“It’s flexible. When you’re in the pilot phase and trying to do your first pilot, now you can use low-temperature heat from electricity, you can use industrial waste heat, you can use geothermal,” he told TechCrunch.
The company is exploring different configurations of the entire system. The collectors are likely to be modular, and liquid will flow from these to large centralized towers for regeneration, similar to the type used in large chemical plants, which Cyffka worked on while working at BASF. Y Combinator alumni are currently testing about 30 prototypes, he added.
According to the company’s issued patent, the key ingredient in AirMyne liquid appears to be one or more variations of a quaternary ammonium compound. Quaternary ammonium is a class of compounds used in a wide range of applications, including hand sanitizers, hair care products and fabric softeners.Interested in them as CO2 Adsorbents have proliferated recently, in part because they are widely available, relatively stable and do not require high heat to release captured carbon dioxide2. In some formulations, they also release CO2 Provides another method of controlling liquid regeneration when they encounter near-saturation humidity.
AirMyne Team. Image Source: air mine
The ability to harness geothermal energy is helpful, Sifka said. “It also gives you a path to scale that I think a lot of other methods would be hard to achieve if you stuck to electricity. Geothermal is a very promising avenue for where DAC is going.”
Along these lines, the company is working with Fervo to pair its carbon capture system with the geothermal startup’s advanced geothermal projects in Utah.with carbon dioxide2 So far it has captured the data in its lab and has sent samples to low-carbon cement company CarbonBuilt and CO2-produced textiles company Rubi.2.
In 2026, AirMyne plans to deploy its carbon capture technology to a storage site in San Joaquin County, California, and inject it underground. To achieve this goal, the company recently raised $6.9 million in seed funding, TechCrunch has learned exclusively.
AirMyne’s use of low-temperature heat could open the door for its technology to be used in a wide range of sites, from geothermal installations to chemical refineries, breweries and more, although final statistics may be limited by the ultimate scale of its regeneration. Liquid-based systems also require large amounts of water—one to seven tons per ton of carbon captured—because some of that water will inevitably evaporate when exposed to the atmosphere. This could hamper its use in arid regions such as the American Southwest.
Still, demand for carbon capture will likely be so great that there will be room in the market for several different companies. AirMyne’s inherent compatibility with geothermal heat could help it carve out a sizable niche.
Investors in this round include Alumni Ventures, Another Brain, Liquid 2 Ventures, EMLES, angel investor Justin Hamilton, Impact Science Ventures, Soma Capital, Wayfinder and Y Combinator.
