Svante Technologies, the developer of MOF-enabled carbon capture filters based in Vancouver, British Columbia, has appointed Justine Fisher as its chief financial officer (CFO).

The company has been rapidly scaling since it closed a US$318 million Series E fundraising round in December 2022, subsequently nearly doubling its employee headcount.

“As we continue to expand our operations globally, we want to ensure that all elements of our business are ready and able to support our rapid scaling, especially those that impact our financial reporting and successful business relationships with existing investors and future funding sources,” said Claude Letourneau, Svante’s President and CEO.

“Carbon management is a critical pillar of the green industrial transition that will help us slow the pace of climate change,” said Fisher. “I am honoured to be a part of the Svante carbon capture solution. It is impressive to see a company scale as quickly as Svante has over the past couple of years and I look forward to working with the team to unlock the company’s next phase of growth as we commercialise around the world.”

Direct Air Capture (DAC)

Since its founding in 2007, Svante has grown to employ nearly 300 professionals and has become a global leader in the carbon capture and removal industry. The company makes solid sorbent-based filters and machines that trap and remove CO2 from heavy, hard-to-abate industrial facilities. These filters can also be used for removing CO2 from the atmosphere in direct air capture (DAC) applications.

There are a number of different DAC technologies for filtering CO2 from the air by either absorption or adsorption using common chemicals which are already in use in other applications – notably water and gas filtration. They include amine-functionalised sorbents and MOFs – metal organic frameworks – which Svante employs and now show the most promise for the future.

MOFs are materials composed of metal ions and organic ligands that form a three-dimensional structure with a high surface area and well-defined pore size and porosity. These properties make MOFs ideal for gas storage and separation, including carbon capture.

Roll goods

During 2023, Svante announced agreements with BASF, for the industrial supply of its MOFs and with 3M to mass produce roll-to-roll MOF filter materials.

Ray Eby, president of 3M’s Personal Safety Division, has said that his company is eager to take on the challenge of scaling the production and supply of carbon removal materials over the next decade – in a similar way to how it managed to triple the production of nonwoven-based N95 respirators in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Our deep expertise in filtration technology, extensive global R&D community and unwavering commitment to creating world-changing solutions give us the confidence to scale these carbon-adsorbing solutions with the necessary speed to combat climate change,” Eby said.

DAC Hubs

DAC is now being taken very seriously in the USA and in August 2023 the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced $1.2 billion in funding for the development of two commercial-scale DAC facilities in Louisiana and Texas.

The two projects announced by the DOE represent the initial selections from President Biden’s DAC Hubs programme, kickstarting a nationwide network of large-scale carbon removal sites planned to address legacy CO2 pollution and complement rapid emissions reductions.

Together, the two projects are expected to remove more than 2 million metric tons of CO2 each year from the atmosphere once fully scaled.

www.svanteinc.com