HEIRLOOM

XPRIZE TRACK
AIR

CDR PATHWAY(S)
Air - Solid sorbent direct air capture
Rocks - Ex-situ mineralization of mined rocks
Rocks - Calcination of minerals with CO2 capture

PHYSICAL PRODUCTS
None

FOUNDED
2020

GET IN TOUCH

Heirloom Carbon Technologies
Brisbane, CA, USA
heirloomcarbon.com

Noah McQueen
[email protected]

COMPANY DESCRIPTION

Heirloom builds a low-cost DAC technology that will permanently remove CO2 at a billiontonnescale. Our technology rapidly accelerates a natural process to capture CO2 from the atmosphere by forming limestone on a timespan of days. Heirloom operates the first and only commercial Direct Air Capture facility in North America and its customers are the world’s biggest buyers of carbon removal including Microsoft, Meta, JPMorgan, Stripe, Klarna, Shopify and more.

CORE INNOVATION

Heirloom is one of the only companies with a real path to permanently sequestering billions of tonnes of CO2 at < $100/t. The science underpinning our technology is well-established, allowing us to focus on scaling. Our feedstock is limestone, a low cost input with a mature supply chain, allowing us to iterate and scale quickly. Last, our energy requirements are lower than other DAC pathways due to the high thermal efficiency of our electric kilns.

CO2 CAPTURE

Heirloom uses limestone (calcium carbonate, Ca(OH)3) in a cyclic process to capture CO2 directly from the air. When CO2 is removed from the limestone, the remaining CaO is hydrated with water to form calcium oxide Ca(OH)2. Ca(OH)2 is ‘thirsty’ for CO2 and acts like a sponge, pulling CO2 from the atmosphere. Heirloom’s technology accelerates this process, reducing the time it takes to absorb CO2 from years to less than 3 days.

CO2 SEQUESTRATION

For the purposes of the XPRIZE demonstration, we will work with CarbonCure to inject and mineralize the CO2 captured at our demonstration site in concrete. Geological storage in Class VI wells will be Heirloom’s primary permanent storage method at scale. Concrete is an important and immediately-available permanent storage method that allows us to fully validate our end-to-end capture and storage process because only 1 Class VI well is permitted and operationalized today in the US.

CO-BENEFITS OR PRODUCTS

The CO2 captured by Heirloom at our XPRIZE demonstration site will be durably sequestered in concrete. The CO2 improves the compressive strength of the concrete and reduces the amount of cement that needs to be used, reducing the cost and emissions footprint of the concrete. Going forward, Heirloom will permanently store CO2 in Class VI wells, creating high-paying jobs and workforce skills and training programs in regions previously harmed by extractive industries.