An Australian firm is revolutionising carbon capture in the cement, steel, power generation, and chemical production industries. KC8 received $10m in funding from Woodside Energy and Mexico’s Cemex Ventures.
Cement – the ‘glue’ that holds infrastructure around the world together – is one of the most energy-intensive products on the planet. Nine per cent of all CO2 emissions caused by humans are from producing cement and concrete, according to Scientific American.
Perth-based firm KC8 Technologies is looking to change that, and it is partnering with some heavy-hitters in the energy and construction industries to do so.
Gonzalo Galindo is the head of Cemex Ventures, an offshoot of the $15-billion publicly traded Mexican cement company, Cemex. Galindo’s job is to invest in companies building sustainable solutions for the construction industry.
“By adopting clean technologies and fostering collaboration with innovative global startups like KC8, we aim to revolutionise the construction industry and significantly reduce the environmental impact of our operations in order to become a net-zero CO2 company by 2050,” says Galindo.
Joining Cemex Ventures in the KC8 $10m raise, is an unnamed petrochemical company, and WA oil and gas producer Woodside Energy.
“As a global energy company, we understand the need to innovate and develop efficient and cost-effective ways to produce safe, lower carbon, affordable and reliable energy through the energy transition,” said Jayne Baird, Woodside’s VP of Carbon Solutions.
“We want to ensure we enable the technological innovation required to do this.”
The KC8 solution
Rather than using amine-based solvents in the challenging cement, steel, power generation, and chemical production industries, KC8 has developed a proprietary, non-toxic solvent created from a natural material.
The company says the technology can capture as much as 95 per cent of CO2 emissions from heavy industrial sources, at a capital cost around 50 per cent lower than amine alternatives. The improvement in energy efficiency is 15 per cent, KC8 states.
“This allows KC8’s technology to treat low pressure, high volumes exhaust gases at lower cost to help these industries meet their net zero targets,” the company states.
Greg Ross is the executive director of KC8 Technologies.
“Being able to provide safe, naturally occuring solvents that have little or no impact to the environment at scale is an incredible feat. By lowering the cost of capture, our goal is to enhance and accelerate CCUS as a leading greenhouse gas mitigation tool that will form an important part of a balanced solution to lowering emissions for all sectors,” says Ross.
The road to capturing industrial carbon
In 2005, Melbourne-based chemical engineer Barry Hooper began filing patents under the name Uno Technologies. KC8 acquired Uno in 2021, and the Uno patents are now the backbone of KC8’s technology. Today, Cooper is KC8’s chief technical officer and co-executive director of the company. He is also associate professor at the University of Melbourne.
At least five patent applications have been filed by KC8 in the last three months.
“Our mission is to provide the most sustainable, cost-effective solution for large-scale abatement — particularly for industries that don’t currently have a clear pathway to emission reduction,” says Perth-based co-executive director Ross.
The industries that the company is focusing on are cement, steel, power generation and chemical production. Ross calls them essential, yet hard to decarbonise industries. The KC8 solution is a ‘lower-cost, and lower potential environmental impact CO2 capture technology compared to conventional amine-based processes,’ Ross says.
“We’re grateful for the local and global industry investment, which will accelerate our commercialisation plans and the deployment of our technology into these critical industries,” he says.
KC8 raised seed rounds in 2021 and 2022 and was awarded a grant from the US Department of Energy (DoE) in 2023. The company will install technology at the DOE National Carbon Capture Center (NCCC) in Alabama this year.
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