Exclusive: Applied Carbon's farm robot turns plant waste into biochar to capture CO2
Summary
Startups are experimenting with massive industrial systems to draw the pollutant out of the air, with facilities costing hundreds of millions of dollars to construct.That has some other founders thinking, why not use plants to do the hard work?To Jason Aramburu and Morgan Williams, the answer was obvious. But as Aramburu and Williams worked through the problem over beers at a bar in Oakland, California, they quickly hit a roadblock. It just kind of dawned on me, the best way to do anything with ag residue was to emulate that model of operation.The result is a farm implement that would make any steampunk fan grin. The current implement is designed primarily for corn residue, but Aramburu said it can also work on a range of other crops, including rice, wheat, straw, sorghum, and sugarcane. The company is currently building machines in Houston and plans to deploy them in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana, where the biochar thats created will store carbon for offsets Applied Carbon has already sold to companies, including Microsoft.For now, the startup is driving the tractors that pull the machines.