Next summer, the Seattle-based startup Banyu Carbon will be testing carbon-extraction technology at the Friday Harbor Marine Labs in an effort to deacidify ocean environments and reduce the harmful impact of climate change on marine ecosystems. Co-founders Alex Gagnon and Julian Sachs have extensive experience conducting fieldwork at the Friday Harbor labs as chemical oceanography faculty for the University of Washington, and they believe San Juan Island is an ideal location to test their equipment.

The idea of Banyu Carbon began after the two professors conducted research at a field site on an island near Tahiti called Tetiaroa – interestingly, other faculty from the Friday Harbor labs work in both places as well. Gagnon and Sachs were conducting research on coral reefs and how carbon dioxide impacts them. Through this research, the duo devised a system to remove and return carbon dioxide to water in order to study the implications of ocean acidification from carbon dioxide on coral reef environments, and they realized they could potentially use this technology to scale up and remove large amounts of carbon from the ocean rather than simulate the future effects of carbon dioxide on marine environments.

“We were coming across these engineering challenges and realized, wait a second, the problems that we’re trying to [create] for an experiment here if we change them a little bit or think about them differently, that might sort of help us solve this problem of carbon removal,” said Gagnon.

Gagnon and Sachs continued developing this idea in their labs at the University of Washington based on their field research in Tetiaroa, eventually leading to the initial patent in March 2022. The patent is owned by UW, and the startup is located at CoMotion Labs, a startup incubator on the UW campus. Banyu, which is the Indonesian word for water, underwent two rounds of fundraising by June 2023, culminating in $8.5 million raised from investors, as well as support from the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and Activate Scholars.

According to an article by GeekWire on Banyu Carbon, the startup will utilize a chemical called reversible photoacid; this chemical releases protons when reacting with sunlight, making a solution more acidic, but the reaction is reversed when sunlight is omitted, making solutions more basic. The carbon dioxide removal system will use sunlight to activate the chemical, and the resulting acidic protons will flow into a tank of seawater, causing carbon dioxide gas to bubble out of the water. The system concludes by capturing the carbon dioxide for disposal, transferring the protons back to the photoacid, and returning seawater back to the ocean.

The best part of reversible photoacid is that it can be recycled and used for ten days before degrading, and it is made with relatively inexpensive ingredients that do not include metals or toxic elements, according to GeekWire.

Gagnon pointed out that one of the main benefits of their system’s design is that they are able to keep the chemical reactions separate from the ocean and protect it from the industrial process, whereas other methods of carbon capture make changes to the properties of seawater or its environments, such as increasing the ocean’s ability to take up more carbon dioxide or by growing more seaweed and algae to sequester carbon dioxide.

“Our process really only removes the pollutant, carbon dioxide. We don’t make new changes to ocean chemistry and are not trying to manipulate other aspects of the marine systems,” said Gagnon. “As a chemical oceanographer who cares a lot about how marine organisms respond to ocean chemistry, that’s my life’s work. That’s why when we realized there was an approach that could do this in a real targeted way…it was worth it for my co-founder and I to take a step back from our faculty roles and really focus on this because it was really different from other places.”

Another key aspect of Banyu’s carbon removal method is that by using sunlight to power the system, it makes for an extremely low-energy process. This is crucial considering one of the main components of combating climate change effects includes reducing carbon emissions in the first place as well as removing carbon dioxide.

Originally, Banyu Carbon’s six-person team planned to run tests at the Friday Harbor labs this summer, but they wanted to continue their work verifying that the project can be scaled up to have a measurable impact. However, the team is on track to work at the labs next summer, where they will take advantage of working with flowing seawater and consistent sunshine to test key technology in the process.

Gagnon has long-time ties with the Friday Harbor Labs, starting from when he was first interviewed for his UW position on San Juan Island back in 2013 and scheduled an extra day at his own expense to visit the labs because he knew how important the facility would be to his work. Since then, he has frequented the labs, conducting research with orange cup corals, one of the native corals that are found in the San Juan Islands, and has had many students, postdocs and other researchers from his lab conduct research and teach there. In addition, Gagnon was one of many contributing members of setting up some of the observational equipment that is used there to monitor the environment and levels of ocean acidification, and he often comes to present during the lab’s open house each year in May.

Although only the Banyu Carbon staff will be running the tests directly for its project, Gagnon is excited about the learning opportunities that will take place through ‘osmosis’ for all of the students who will be at the labs next summer, being that it is a small environment where everyone knows about what everyone is working on, according to Gagnon.

“Our students and researchers, like all of us, are really eager to find ways to translate the science that they’re doing and the fundamental things they’ve learned in class and the lab into trying to have a positive impact on the planet. And so providing exposure to moving from the lab out into the real world and what commercialization looks like is a key mission for my co-founder and I as educators to sort of learn what that looks like and to involve students and researchers,” said Gagnon.

As for the future, Banyu Carbon already has a pre-purchase arrangement with a consortium of different companies through Frontier, a fund that brings together different tech companies to help develop a carbon dioxide removal market with companies pledging to purchase carbon dioxide removal to offset their emissions, often associated with cloud computing. Banyu Carbon has promised to deliver 350 million tons of carbon dioxide removed by 2026 – 2027, most likely through a new facility located in the Gulf of Mexico, and will be based on the technology used in the Friday Harbor labs.

Gagnon and Sachs are excited to be actively working towards a solution to the ongoing climate crisis and are invigorated by the opportunity to make a significant impact.

“After studying climate for so long, it can be challenging or depressing because of the trajectory that some systems are on is really sad to see, so to be able to be working on a an aspect of climate science where there’s an opportunity to use that knowledge gained to potentially have a really positive impact is is really exciting and exhilarating,” said Gagnon.