SpiralWave’s pulsing plasma towers transform carbon dioxide into liquid fuel

If there’s anything that came from one of the worlds that was promised to us in “Back to the Future” or “The Jetsons” or innumerable other sci-fi franchises, it’s what SpiralWave co-founder and CEO Abed Bukhari showed me on a video call. Purple-tinged waves of white plasma rhythmically rose and vanished within a metal-screened column, igniting in time with metronomic clicks coming from elsewhere in the chemistry kit.

This isn’t some space propulsion system, but a device that can capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or a smokestack and transform it into something useful. “You can see the plasma here in very quick pulses,” Bukhari told me. “With every pulse, it breaks down CO₂.”

The plasma waves are ignited by three different pulses of microwaves, each with its own frequency that targets different molecular bonds, driving a cascade of chemical reactions. 

“The first one breaks down CO₂ into CO, the second one breaks down H₂O into H and OH, and the third one is to join them into methanol,” Bukhari said. SpiralWave pitched its tech on the Startup Battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt.

Methanol is a simple hydrocarbon consisting of just a handful of atoms, but that simplicity offers flexibility. It can be burned directly in internal combustion engines, as some race cars do today, or it can be refined into more complex hydrocarbons like jet fuel. It can also be used to make chemicals used in a range of industries.

Depending on the concentration of carbon dioxide, SpiralWave’s process transforms between 75-90% of the system’s electrical energy into chemical energy stored in the form of methanol; atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ are on the lower end of that range, and industrial flue gas is at the higher end. That compares favorably with other methods that make methanol from captured CO₂, which are about 50% efficient.

Bukhari came to carbon removal in a roundabout way. His previous startup, KomraVision, made spectrometers, and to build the specialized components, he constructed some of his own semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Some of those tools used cold plasma, a form of energized matter commonly found in fluorescent lamps. “I was, at that time, very deep into cold plasma,” he said.

But with the climate crisis looming, “I needed to build something that can stall the biggest challenge we have on Earth these days, which is removing a huge quantity of CO₂,” he said.

Bukhari had a cold-plasma hammer, and carbon pollution was looking a lot like a nail.

After building a small prototype to prove the concept, he met his co-founder, Adam Awad, then a student at Santa Clara University, and the two founded SpiralWave. Today, Awad is based in Silicon Valley, where he heads up business development, while Bukhari is in Austria, about 30 minutes from Munich, where he leads research and development. The company has raised $1 million from IndieBio, Awad said.

SpiralWave’s first prototypes range from the knee-high Nanobeam to Microbeam, which is about 2 meters or six-and-a-half feet. The devices can produce a metric ton of methanol using a stream of 90% carbon dioxide and 7,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity. For more dilute streams, around 9%, it takes 8,500 kilowatt-hours, and for ambient air, it takes 10,000 kilowatt-hours, all of which compare favorably to other sources of e-methanol today.  

The team has plans for larger devices, too, which it’s calling Megabeam and Gigabeam. The latter would be 100 meters tall and be able to remove one gigaton of CO₂ annually. “To fight climate change, we need to remove 10 gigatons of CO₂ per year,” Bukhari said.

In the meantime, SpiralWave is focusing on replicating its smaller devices and placing them in shipping containers to be installed at customer sites. The duo are optimistic about their prospects: “With ten, 20-foot containers, we would have the largest e-methanol plant to date,” Awad said.