Phlair skips the heat: a pH-swing machine bets acid, not energy, makes DAC cheap

A direct air capture startup building machines that pull CO2 from ambient air and sell the captured carbon and removal credits.

€12M seed led by Extantia Capital with Atlantic Labs, Counteract, Planet A, UnternehmerTUM Funding for Innovators and Verve Ventures, plus a €2.5M EU EIC Accelerator grant.

Co-founder and CEO Malte Feucht, formerly of the hydrogen industry's equipment ecosystem, argues that heating sorbents to release CO2 — the approach of larger players like Climeworks and Carbon Engineering — will never get cheap enough: one study puts Carbon Engineering's route at nearly three-quarters of world electricity for 10 gigatons a year.

Phlair, formerly known as Carbon Atlantis, fans air over an absorber, then releases the CO2 with acid instead of heat. Its hydrolyzer, combining elements of membrane electrolyzers and fuel cells, makes the acid and base. A pH swing from high to low releases the captured CO2 for piping to use or storage. Paebbl will use the Dutch plant's carbon for a cement additive; Deep Sky's Canadian plant will store it.

The bet targets the single costliest step in incumbent DAC designs, so if the chemistry works at scale, the cost curve bends for structural rather than incremental reasons.

Recycling equipment concepts from the mature hydrogen industry shortcuts hardware risk compared to inventing machinery from scratch.

Revenue started before scale: credits sold to Frontier-backed buyers de-risk the path to the 260-ton plants.

When scaling a process hits an energy wall, re-examine the one step everyone accepts as expensive: borrowing proven equipment from an adjacent industry (hydrogen) can replace it entirely.

As of September 19, 2024, the pilot was deploying and the 260-ton plants with Paebbl and Deep Sky were scheduled for late 2025; the material records no later results.