About Us
Where we are
We champion the same culture of rapid iteration, disruptive innovation, and bold vision that has made this region a hub for technical innovation in the world. Opus 12 was one of six clean energy startups selected from around the country to be incubated in the first cohort of the prestigious Cyclotron Road program at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Today, our headquarters is located in Berkeley, CA.
Founding team
Out of the lab and into industry
The Jaramillo Group at Stanford University is recognized as a world leader in CO₂ electrocatalysis, and Opus 12’s technical co-founders were part of the initial foundation of the CO₂ lab during their graduate studies. There, they developed key methods for studying CO₂-reducing catalysts and reactions, and published seminal discoveries on the breadth of products that is possible to reduce from CO₂.
In 2015, Dr. Kendra Kuhl and Dr. Etosha Cave were ready to translate their fundamental discoveries out of the lab and into industry, and they co-founded Opus 12 with Nicholas Flanders, a fellow Stanford graduate student and experienced entrepreneur with a foundational career in cleantech.
Our team and partners
Uniquely positioned to bring this solution to market
We are electrochemists, material scientists, and engineers with cutting-edge expertise in the field of CO₂ electrocatalysis and electrochemical reactor design, scouted from the best programs in the world. Our team has partnered with industry leaders in electrolysis and plant design to implement our technology at scale. With access to world-class research facilities at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the backing of top-tier funders, we have the partnerships in place to commercialize our solution.
Technology
What we're building
We have developed a device that recycles CO2 into chemicals and fuels.
Our technology bolts onto any source of CO2 emissions, and with only water and electricity as inputs, transforms that CO2 into some of the world's most critical chemical products. We can reduce the carbon footprint of the world’s heaviest emitters, while creating a new revenue stream from what is discarded today as a waste product.
Learning from nature
37,000 trees in a suitcase
We are recreating photosynthesis, but at warp speed. Plants use CO₂, water, and renewable power to produce oxygen and useful carbon-based products. What if we could use the forces of industrialization to replicate nature’s process, and tune it to make the building blocks for petrochemicals, materials, and even jet fuel? And just as a plant uses sunlight to drive this transformation, what if we could use renewable electricity to drive ours?
Core process
Electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide: “reverse combustion”
Our process combines CO₂, water, and electricity to produce higher-energy carbon-based products and a co-product of pure oxygen. This reaction is energetically uphill, so electricity must be added to drive the reaction forward, and it is not possible without a new family of CO₂-reducing catalysts.
Opus 12’s innovation
A drop-in component that enables existing technology to transform CO₂
Our core invention combines new catalysts with a novel drop-in component that reprograms existing hardware to split CO₂. It’s a capital-light solution that takes advantage of technology that has been commercialized for decades.
We have partnered with a world-leading manufacturer of this existing hardware to greatly accelerate our time to market.
“You might be one of the first applications that fits that niche.” - Bill Gates
History of the field
Origins in the Energy Crises of the 1970s
Like other innovations in the oil and gas sector (including today’s U.S. shale gas fracking boom), the advent of electrochemical CO₂ conversion can be traced to the energy crises of the 1970s. With no domestic oil resources to speak of, Japanese scientists were motivated by the supply shock to find alternative sources of hydrocarbon fuels, and were among the first to demonstrate that a metal catalyst could be used to reduce CO₂ into useful products (Hori, 1982).
When oil prices dropped after the crisis, interest in CO₂ conversion research dwindled, and the field was not revived until the last decade, when the climate change imperative rekindled scientific interest and research funding. The Jaramillo Group at Stanford University is recognized as a world leader in CO₂ electrocatalysis, and Opus 12’s technical co-founders were part of the initial foundation of the CO₂ lab during their graduate studies.
Case Studies
1. Climate Change
A growing resource
Society has generated two trillion tons of CO₂ since the Industrial Revolution.
And we will release hundreds of billions more in decades to come, even with rapid action. No practical or economic solution yet exists to handle this massive stream of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions while we transition to cleaner alternatives. But what if we reframed CO₂ as a feedstock, rather than a waste product?
Embedded emissions
CO₂ is here to stay
While shifts toward renewable power and the electrification of transport will help to mitigate CO₂ emissions in the long term, massive quantities of greenhouse gas emissions will continue to be released in the interim.
Moreover, many industrial processes (e.g., chemicals and glass production) have inherent process-related CO₂ emissions that would be generated even with 100% renewable power. The energy density requirements for long haul flights may mean that CO₂-emitting liquid fuels will remain the best option indefinitely.
What if we reframed CO₂ as a feedstock, rather than a waste product?
A new paradigm
At the nexus of the global chemical and energy system of the future
In the same way that photosynthesis is at the center of our ecosystem - converting sunlight into the oxygen we breathe and the food we eat - Opus 12's technology could be central to our economy, integrating ever-cheaper renewables with the massive volumes of CO₂ that we need to mitigate, while producing the critical products that are the building blocks of modern civilization.
Potential impact
Like clearing every highway and idling every refinery.
Transportation fuels, natural gas, and many petrochemical products can be synthesized from carbon dioxide and water. Hence, if coupled with low-carbon electricity, electrochemical reduction of CO₂ could theoretically address one third of global energy-related CO₂ emissions.
Creating products like plastics, agricultural chemicals, and jet fuel, while releasing zero net new CO₂ emissions.
From liability to revenue
Our technology enables industries to reduce their CO₂ emissions profitably
We are commercializing our technology first in high-margin applications where we can produce specialty products from CO₂ for significantly lower cost than with conventional methods. Over time, as our costs and the price of renewable power decrease, we will expand into ever-higher volume applications.
2. Industry
Lower cost, reduced emissions, simpler supply
CO₂ conversion gives our customers an alternative way to manufacture products
Our technology reduces emissions and provides a new income stream from something that is currently discarded as a waste product. We generate products that are chemically identical to conventional fossil-fuel derived products, but with significantly lower CO₂ footprints when powered by low-carbon electricity.
Market-driven growth
Waste into wealth
We believe that the fastest way to scale impact is through organic, market-driven growth. Our revenue model and our impact are intertwined: the more CO₂ emissions we convert, the greater our returns, and the more we can invest in new deployment.
A new value chain based on recycled CO₂, rather than on fossil fuels.
Ethylene
Carbon-negative plastic that sequesters three tons of CO₂ per ton of material.
Ethylene, the precursor for most of the world's plastics, is made from ethane (natural gas) or naphtha (oil), and its manufacture releases up to 2 tons of CO₂ per ton of ethylene produced. If ethylene were made using our process, it would consume 3 tons of CO₂ per ton of ethylene, and you would avoid the 2 tons of process emissions.
We are proud to be developing our CO₂ to ethylene process for NASA
Biogas
Doubling the yield of existing assets
Renewable natural gas, which is derived from organic waste, is a rapidly growing market, from $20 billion today to $33 billion by 2022. When biogas is produced at a landfill, wastewater treatment plant, or farm, it contains up to 50% CO₂, which is currently thrown away. Our process could convert that CO₂ into methane, effectively doubling the yield of an existing process and reducing the cost of gas separation infrastructure.
We are proud to be sponsored by SoCalGas for our work on CO₂ to methane.
Syngas
Fuel, food, foam, and pharma
Syngas is a critical building block that is used in a wide range of applications, from creating an air-tight environment for food preservation, to manufacturing performance foams and pharmaceuticals. At large scale, syngas can be converted into diesel or jet fuel. This is an alternative way to electrify transportation: create liquid fuels that work in today’s infrastructure and engines, but which are produced from renewable power and CO₂, rather than from oil.
We are proud to have received funding from Shell for our approach to renewable syngas
Beyond
A platform technology that transforms CO₂ into a variety of products at a range of scales.
Our research has demonstrated CO₂ conversion to 16 different products. Our technology is modular and scalable, which means that it can be tailored to a wide range of applications and customer needs.
As renewable electricity becomes ever cheaper, the breadth of markets that we can address expands.
3. Mars
The vision
What if humans on Mars didn’t need materials from Earth?
What if you could establish human presence on Mars without launching building materials for a colony, rocket fuel for return trips, and oxygen for astronauts? Opus 12’s technology enables “in situ resource utilization”, converting the Martian atmosphere into useful materials.
The ingredients
Everything we need is already there.
The atmosphere of Mars is 95% CO₂, and with recent discoveries of water on the Red Planet, we have the inputs we need for our process.
An Opus 12 reactor could be sent to Mars, along with solar panels or a nuclear reactor to provide electricity to drive the CO₂ conversion reaction.
Many of the CO₂-derived products that we’re commercializing could play a critical role on Mars
Applications
Tools, fuel, and fresh air
Many of the CO₂-derived products that Opus 12 is commercializing on Earth would play a critical role on a Mars mission. Methane can be used as rocket fuel and as feedstock for microbes to create food or medicine. Ethylene can be used to create 3D-printable plastics for tools, containers, and shelters.
Producing carbon monoxide from CO₂ with our process consumes no net water, thereby offering an attractive way to generate oxygen without consuming the limited water resources of Mars.
What are we developing?
A prototype for NASA creating methane & ethylene from CO₂ in one small step. It’s one giant leap for mankind.
Opus 12’s technology offers several advantages over other approaches, such as Fischer-Tropsch for ethylene and Sabatier for methane. Our reactor can ramp in seconds to full capacity; it is operationally simple with no moving parts, which makes it ideal for autonomous operation, and our core reactor design is already space-proven.
Source: Opus 12
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