Captura, a California-based carbon removal company, announced the start of operations at its latest pilot plant, capable of capturing 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually.
Located in Kona, Hawaii, and developed in partnership with multinational energy company Equinor, the facility marks a major milestone in the commercialization of Direct Ocean Capture (DOC) technology – a process that leverages the ocean to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere. As the third and final pilot in Captura's technology development program, this facility readies the company's DOC technology for deployment in large, commercial systems worldwide.
The ocean is one of the world's largest carbon sinks, absorbing approximately 30 percent of global CO2 emissions. DOC technology works by extracting CO2 directly from the upper ocean, thereby enhancing the ocean's natural ability to absorb additional CO2 from the atmosphere. By leveraging natural oceanic processes, requiring no feedstock, and generating no waste, the DOC approach to carbon removal offers an inherently scalable and efficient way to remove vast quantities of atmospheric CO2.
Captura's DOC technology achieves this by combining innovations in electrodialysis and gas extraction with widely available water and gas handling systems. These modular technologies have been successfully demonstrated at two prior pilot plants in Los Angeles, and the Hawaii pilot will now validate them at the scale and performance level that can be replicated in larger plants. Captura is proceeding with initial design work for its first large-scale commercial facility, with an expected annual capture capacity of tens of thousands of tons of CO2.
"Captura's journey from lab-scale testing to our third technology demonstration in just three years is a testament to the scalability of our solution," said Steve Oldham, CEO of Captura. "This facility in Hawaii is the last milestone before we move to widespread commercial deployment of DOC technology. Its rapid installation and commissioning in just over two months demonstrates how our simple, modular design is ready to be scaled quickly to help address the urgent climate and energy challenge."
DOC is a flexible technology that can serve a variety of climate and industrial use cases. The CO2 extracted at DOC facilities is delivered as a measurable stream of pipeline-purity CO2 gas, which can then be directly sequestered to create carbon dioxide removal, used as a feedstock to produce renewable fuels, or utilized by industries that require CO2. In Hawaii, the CO2 captured at the Captura plant will be provided to a range of local industries, such as aquaculture operators, to help reduce the carbon intensity of their operations.
Captura's facility is operating at the Hawai'i Ocean Science and Technology (HOST) Park, a leading ocean research facility run by the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA). NELHA has administered the park in Kona for more than 50 years, generating almost $150 million annually for Hawaii's economy and creating over 600 jobs statewide. NELHA runs a comprehensive environmental monitoring program at HOST Park, which complements Captura's own practices and research on ocean health.
Captura's technology is designed to be highly scalable and cost-effective while prioritizing the protection of the ocean ecosystem. The process produces zero waste or by-products and introduces nothing new into the ocean—it simply removes excess CO2, which the atmosphere then naturally replaces.
