Capturing CO2 with Paint - Steve & Beth McDaniel

Dr. Steve McDaniel and Beth McDaniel, JD founded and run Reactive Surfaces, and intellectual property firm that develops and patents paints that do more than turn buildings attractive colors and protect them from the elements: They react to the atmosphere in intentional and desirable ways. They are currently in the running to win the most valuable X-Prize contest ever by creating a paint that captures CO2 from the atmosphere more simply, cheaply and scaleably than any direct air carbon technology before it.

The McDaniels founded Reactive Surfaces in 2001 in response to the events of 911. They wanted to know if they could stabilize an enzyme in a coating to protect surfaces against a chemical weapons attack. This original technology is called WMDtox, and it works to decontaminate organophosphorous nerve gases virtually on contact. From there, they have developed other various functional platform technologies using non-toxic bio-based organisms, such as self-cleaning coatings and coatings that are antimicrobial and antiviral.

Carbon Capture Coatings have the power to significantly reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, thereby lessening the impact of global warming. Carbon Capture Coatings are bio-engineered such that, when exposed to sunlight, they capture and fix atmospheric carbon dioxide. These coatings support living cells capable of carrying out photosynthesis, the process by which Nature captures and fixes atmospheric CO2.

Further Reading:

·      Carbon Capture Coatings: Next Generation Biomimetic Coatings for Carbon Capture & Removal

·      Carbon Capture Coatings: Can Paints and Coatings Save Humanity?

Transcript

Gregory A. Williams: 0:10

Thanks for joining us for another episode of climate money watchdog where we investigate and report on how federal dollars are being spent on mitigating climate change and protecting the environment. We are a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that does not accept advertisers or sponsors. So we can only do this work with your support. Please visit us at climate money watchdog.org To learn more about us and consider making a donation. My name is Greg Williams, and I learned to investigate and report on waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending. While working at the project on government oversight, or Pogo 30 years ago, I learned to do independent research as well as to work with confidential informants or whistleblowers to uncover things like overpriced spare parts, like the infamous $435 hammers, as well as weapon systems that didn't work as advertised. I was taught by my co host, Dino razor, who founded Pogo in 1981, and founded climb money watchdog with me last year, Dina has spent 40 years investigating and sometimes recovering millions of dollars wasted by the Defense Department and other branches of government and pogo, as an independent journalist, as an author, and as a professional investigator. Dina, would you like to say a few words before I introduce our guests?

Dina Rasor: 1:31

Yes, that Greg pretty much told you that I've been an investigator forever. And I've done different kinds of investigations, some for journalism, some for nonprofits. And when that I started Pogo, which is now still 40, some years later, still going on the board of directors, I should always say that so people know. And they lots I've also done lawsuits qui tam False Claims Act lawsuits. And I've always been proud of the fact that returned over $200 million in ill gotten gains to the federal government, but it always also when I should look up because I'm sure the Pentagon toilet paper budget is that's just a few days of the Pentagon toilet paper, budget, but we keep going. Okay, and that's pretty much my introduction, and so Greg will introduce our guests.

Gregory A. Williams: 2:28

So our guests tonight are Dr. Steve McDaniel, and attorney Beth McDaniel. Dr. McDaniel is founder and Chief Innovation Officer at reactive services, Founder and Managing Partner in McDaniel and Associates, a law firm specializing in intellectual property. And Beth McDaniel is president of reactive services, a partner with McDaniel and Associates, as well as a partner at COVID lawsuit experts. Steven Beth founded reactive services in 2001 in response to the events of 911. They wanted to know if they could stabilize an enzyme and a coating to protect surfaces against a chemical weapon attack. This original technology is called the W N detox and works to decontaminate organophosphorus nerve gases, virtually uncontacted. From there, they've developed other various functional platform technologies using non toxic bio based organisms, such as self cleaning coatings and coatings that are anti microbial and antivirus. That's an STI believe carbon capture coatings have the power to significantly reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, thereby lessening the impact of global warming. Carbon Capture coatings are bio engineered such that when exposed to sunlight, they capture and fix atmospheric carbon dioxide. These coatings support living cells capable of carrying out photosynthesis, the process by which nature captures and fixes atmospheric co2. Deena, would you like to say a few words about why we're excited to?

Dina Rasor: 4:06

Yeah, I guess I'm very, very excited for anybody who's listened to our podcasts or will know that we did at least two podcasts on carbon capture and sequestration, the traditional, let's put something on the smokestack second up, get a small percentage of carbon out of it, the press, compress it, put it in a pipeline, and we're pipelines have to be built everywhere, which is, you know, not a popular thing to do these days. And then you have to find some cave or some underground thing to sequester it. Hopefully forever and hopefully it doesn't escape and it is very expensive. It is you know, or you can also just direct air suck it out of the air. But as I always thought that seemed that the percentages that they have of how much carbon they actually capture they I've already been inflating that I was thought that was like emptying the ocean with a teaspoon. And so we've been we've looked at that, and believe it or not half the money, that in the in the infrastructure, you know, not the infrastructure act.

Gregory A. Williams: 5:19

Go is going better?

Dina Rasor: 5:22

Well, yeah. Half of that money is actually going to fossil fuel companies to try to keep beating this dead horse on carbon capture. So I'm, you know, we're here to say, if you're going to spend the money, we got to make sure it works. Get the politics out of it. You know, it doesn't matter who you know. And so we're really delighted that we have the McDaniels both here to tell us that there is actually somebody trying to do more, more creative, more effective carbon capture that, especially when you don't have to build pipelines and find caves, which I find, you know, ludicrous. And maybe you have an opinion on that, too. But that's why I'm glad and I jumped on this because I thought, well, here are some, here's some scientists and lawyers are both sides, both sides, your one scientist, and two lawyers. Sit down and actually look at this and say, there's got, there's a better way using the knowledge you had already. So welcome. And thank you so much for coming. So to start, Greg gave an introduction. But let's dive a little deeper about your company, reactive services and the main products in general so we can get an idea of where you guys came from.

Beth McDaniel: 6:49

Sure, thanks for having us. We really appreciate it, Greg, and Deena, we're happy to be here. And well, we're our company is called reactive surfaces. For the last couple decades, what we've been doing is reaching into nature, and looking for functionality that nature provides. And then putting that into paint and coating system. Now just for referential here as saying paint and coatings a lot. coatings are a paint without color. And that's pretty much it. A coating is something that is that is used, usually to either decorate a surface with color or or to protect a surface. And it's used in almost every everything that's that has been manufactured. At some point, its manufacturing process, there's going to be a coding system at some point, what we add to that is functionality. And so that is that we want our surfaces to react to something to to be functional in some way. So for instance, one one such functionality that we've got is, is a self cleaning, functionality, anti fingerprint, for instance. And what we do is in nature, there's there are enzymes that naturally break down greases, fats and oils on contact, we know about that. That's not our science. But what our science is, is we take that, and we know how to put that into a coding system and allow it to do what it wants to do in nature. But in the coding system, then surfaces, like you you know about paint, everyone knows about paint surfaces, our canvas for functionality, we can, we can read as much paint as we want, and get as much functionality as we want on surfaces. And so that's where we come in at the intersection of biotechnology and material science. And so if we took, for instance, that lipase and put it into a coding system, and we've done it many times into many different coating systems for many different applications in many different industries, then it would for instance, if it was painted on your countertops, then you would have self cleaning countertops. If it was on your eyeglasses, then your fingerprints are not going to show up on your eyeglasses anymore. The enzyme as long as it's as long as the paint or the coating system is working. That enzyme is going to be working to break down that grease that natural versus fats and oils on contact. There's lots of other applications for instance, like we were contacted once about using it we call this technology decrease and we were contacted once about using degrees in a sewer pipe to get rid of those fat berms that you hear about that float in the ocean that are so gross. And so there's you don't We don't even know the reason why we call these platform technologies is because they can be used by a variety of industries. in a variety of applications, so that is one and an example of a platform technology. Another platform technology that we have is, is, is an antimicrobial technology. And you might say, Well, I've heard of anti microbial paints and coatings, and you have, and there are there are out there, but I'm one distinction with our technology, or platform technologies is that they're naturally they're made with naturally occurring additives. And, and they're bio based, and they're non toxic. So what you have with, with other anti microbial coatings that you might have heard of, are usually heavy metals, or other ingredients that might be in not environmentally benign or not too great for people either. So and a lot of them are being regulated out. We took when, when the pandemic hit, when the pandemic hit, we decided to test that same. That's using a peptide peptide technology. And we decided to use that peptide technology to see if we were if it was effective against viruses, enveloped by viruses, which are the kind that COVID-19 is an enveloped virus. And we were very successful at that too. So the technology can be it can be modified by for instance, we own a 53 million peptide lab library of peptides that we can pick and choose from this is a very tailored approach to dealing with a problem is we can grab a certain peptide, and in combination with other peptides or in combination with other enzymes, and get them to do the work that we're trying to do.

Gregory A. Williams: 11:49

So I'll say maybe help our listeners understand better by giving a brief description of what a peptide is. And then I'll admit that chemistry was my worst subject in high school and admit that I'm going to need an explanation as well.

Beth McDaniel: 12:05

I'm going to defer to my biochemist, husband and Chief Innovation Officer for them.

Steve McDaniel: 12:10

They always let the geek come out of the laboratory of once in a while. So here I am at the lab, living systems, you all US plants, bacteria, etc. All basically we're by having a blueprint. And that blueprint is in the form of nucleic acids, DNA particular and RNA. Those nucleic acids have the work through ribosomes are building proteins. They also build peptides and the building blocks are simply amino acids. A peptide is a short chain of amino acids, usually no more than about 50 or 60. A enzyme sometimes are you know, massive mini subunits they can they can have 1000s upon 1000s of amino acids, like beads on a string. Okay. So in generally is a size thing. Okay, a peptide, protein. I hope that answered your question.

Gregory A. Williams: 13:11

Yeah, it certainly improved my understanding. Thanks. Okay, so

Dina Rasor: 13:16

how? Yeah, so have you use mother nature as a model for carbon capture coatings?

Beth McDaniel: 13:22

So again,

Dina Rasor: 13:23

how did you get into this?

Beth McDaniel: 13:24

Right, so again, what we did is we pulled from nature, what we do at reactive surfaces, is we try to address, you know, systemic problems, big problems with paint, we have solutions to some of those problems that we can find it paint like anti COVID paint, like the one that you described when Greg, you introduced us and and that's a, an enzymatic additive that it wouldn't in a in a coating system will break down and detoxify organophosphorus nerve weapons. And in this case, well, we were we were really blinded by the urgency of the situation in 2018, when the UN issued their, their, the IPCC, the International Panel on Climate Change report in 2018. That was the one that was very dire. And it really just struck us I mean, for we're married, and I can tell you that this one just was on the couch for about a week. He was just like, I can't believe the, this this situation that we're in, and we he, we thought about it and thought about it and there was a technology that he had been considering for a while. That was based on how lichens react in the environment. And he said within a week we had gone to our team, we had a team meeting. And we decided that we were going to pursue This technology because we thought that we could use paint to pull down carbon dioxide in the same way that like and do in nature. And that's what we've done. Okay, so there's a lot more we can say,

Dina Rasor: 15:14

sorry. Okay, what? Yeah, well, that's okay. Like I was about right saying it was a layman's explanation of the technology on using like imitating nature on the co2. So like, we like getting in the weeds here, but not so much of getting super high tech. And things but we like to get in the weeds and where we feel that you know, you the the listener can then begin to understand it. And so far, you guys have done a good job of explaining it. So can you give us an idea of like an imitation nature? Nature? I think that's an interesting concept.

Steve McDaniel: 15:50

I'm sorry. Yes, absolutely. It's a good question. Let me say something, though, about what Beth had to say. I was catatonic. You spent your whole life as a father and a mother, it's doing nothing but trying to figure out how to keep your children safe and, and for them to thrive. Okay. So when we started the moonshot project, which is what we called it, I told my team, I don't want us to merely survive. I don't want my children to survive and survive only. I want them to thrive. And they're thriving on Earth. So let us look at Earth, let us look at nature and figure out how it is humans thrive. And it's pretty simple. Actually, guys, if you if you look at it, if you ask course the best DAC system, Director capture system in the world, the best system is the carbon cycle, the natural carbon cycle, the Earth produces tons and tons and tons. I say Earth, like organisms produce tons and tons and tons of carbon dioxide every day. But those same systems also pull it down. And basically, it's bounced with a slight slight amount more going into sequesteration that is being emitted by natural systems. So what are the natural systems doing? That's what we wanted? I said, what are what how is it working? How is it working? Well, it was really pretty simple math. What what what what nature does is it takes a rate of capture the rate of photosynthesis, how, how fast is it gonna go, that they can capture the co2, spreading that capability out on very, very, very wide surface areas, the entire surface of the ocean down to about 200 meters, that's called the photic zone. cryptogamic soils all over the earth, every every particle of sand has these things on it. Okay, these are microscopic organisms, and they are photosynthesizing every second. All right. So that's how it does captured, right of capture times the surface area. That's what we had to do. One problem with that is that photosynthesis have an has a natural speed limit. And now I'm going to have to geek out on your just a little teeny tiny bit, sorry, the speed limit is measured in you know how much co2 And we can talk about that in terms of milli moles, 1000s of moles and moles. I'll tell you about that in a second. Well, moles, ARB is a way to quantitate the number of molecules or the mass of something in your hand, okay. And times the hours you allow the photosynthesis to take place over a meter squared. That's how every scientist in the world will report to you. The rate of photosynthesis on a leaf are on the ocean surface or anything. So we have to have that rate. And it's its natural speed limit is about 18 millimoles per hour per meter squared. Some of the best plant systems that we have in the labs are called rabid dogs, or rabid dogs, this is a mustard and they measured they've maximized everything they could possibly do, and they can't get it above about 80. And there are a lot of people, they're very interested in getting photosynthesis to work better. It's never happened. Okay, not one bit better. Alright. So that's the speed limit. All right. Well, yeah, the speed limit, we got to worry about. Do we have a problem with surface? Well, the Earth is, is got a lot of surface area on the ocean and on the land, okay. But it's already doing a great job with those surfaces. We don't want to mess that up. We want that to go as fast as it possibly can. You know, let's not, let's not do anything to prevent the ocean or the cryptographic soils from doing what they're doing because they're doing a good job. But we still need a lot of surface area, tons and tons of surface area. Where are we going to get that? Well, that's when we have that idea about the pain There's really something very unique about paint. If you look at the wall behind you, you can see that you have essentially an anti gravity machine back there. It's a thin, thin layer of paint. It weighs stuff it weighs, and it piles on top of it. And but it can basically go to the sky's limit, that vertical surface could be painted as high as you want to paint it. And that's because the paint adheres to the surfaces. Well, we thought, well, well, that's where we got to go. We've got to go to vertical surfaces, not horizontal surfaces, not tongs, not forests, not boats out of the rivers, we've got to go to vertical surfaces. And that's why we came up with the carbon capture coatings. But you're there's one more element to that. And that is applied on massively iterated vertical surfaces. CCC, it might be yes. So even though we have a speed limit, all we have to do right now all we have to do is make a whole bunch more surface area. Now you asked if I might continue. You asked, Where in nature? Did you see this working? Have you seen this working somewhere? There's a pain out in nature? Well, if you've ever gone hiking, you'd probably say yeah, there is I see rocks all the time, they're orange, and pink and gray and black and white. And those things very tightly attached to the surfaces of rocks, for instance, are called WeiChen. They look all the world, like someone splashed a bunch of paint on the rock. And they go as high as they need to go, you can you can be on the highest mountain tops, and you're gonna find like and growing there. So the the vertical verticality issue seems to be have also been solved by nature. So we began looking at how Lycon were actually physically configured. We tried to then mimic exactly with our, our polymer systems, our the way we formulate them and everything so that it looks and acts very, very much like a lie can say that real fast. So we'll talk like a lie. Anyway, like I like it as as if it were a like, yes, please go ahead.

Gregory A. Williams: 22:17

So I'm going to, again, try to conjure up some of my high school science teaching. And what I recall about lichens is not only can they adhere to just about any configuration of surface, but they they don't, they don't require soil or water. And so I remember being taught about the progression of, you know, lichen, which eventually breaks down and provides just enough nutrients for a moss to grow. And that eventually breaks down into soil. And that's how you eventually get more sophisticated plant life. And so you're you're taking in the way nature already treats these otherwise very barren surfaces, and put it on the first rung of the ladder and, you know, moving into a more living configuration.

Steve McDaniel: 23:04

Yeah, that's, that's right. And, and the other way to think about this is another capability of lichens. In other words, they can basically make their own niche, okay, they can go up rocks, they can go up trees, they can get on whales noses, I mean, they can get everywhere, all right. But they have one thing in common. A lichen is to organisms, at least. And so there's a fungus like you were talking about that, that basically allows it without any soil or anything just to thrive. But inside that fungus are nestled and almost like milk cows, if you will, a pasture of animal cells. Usually these are blue green algae, we call them algae, they're really bacteria. And they're photosynthetic. And they produce everything nutrient that that fungus needs. Even the algae, I'm sorry, the algae produce everything that that fungus needs and that they also need. All right. So it seems symbiotic. Sir,

Dina Rasor: 24:02

it's symbiotic, you know, in the sense that they need they they need each other to survive.

Steve McDaniel: 24:09

Well, to be exact, it's not quite a symbiotic relationship. If we are symbiotic with cows, then then I suppose then the algae and and the symbiotic relationship, but they milk the fungus milks the product from the cells and occasionally will intrude them and kill them. So yeah, synbiotics not quite right, but it sure looks like it. Okay,

Dina Rasor: 24:37

all right. Well on your literature on the lichen project, which we're gonna get into that whole project in little in a little bit. Once we get past the technology part, claims that your technology has a carbon removal efficiency of 50% at a cost of $629 per tonne of co2 sequestered And by the way, that is really an important part because the costs of traditional carbon capture and sequestration is just huge. You also claim the technology is already economically competitive with existing direct air carbon capture and storage, and further improvements will make any more economically competitive. Give us some examples of the co2 technologies that you can compete with in this carbon capture.

Beth McDaniel: 25:28

Field. Yeah, I will. And I want to mention that the 629 that you mentioned is is we have to keep in mind that that's a certain scenario that was that that was analyzed by our lifecycle analysis team, or their, you know, third party independent company that comes in to does these analysis is based on a certain set of facts is all I'm saying. So keep that in the back of your mind, those facts can change. And then there could be another analysis that's done for that set of facts, which was done for our team like an X PRIZE that we'll talk about later. X PRIZE team then that that was a set of facts that went into that number. Other CCS? Excuse me, other carbon capture and storage tech technologies that you hear about, are well, the most notable and the one that everyone wants to say is yeah, why don't we just plant a bunch of trees, and trees are great, and we shouldn't cut them down. And but in order, in order to really address this problem, we have to address it at gigaton scale, which is a billion tonnes, meaning we have to capture in the billions of tonnes in order to make a difference. Trees in order to get to a gigaton scale, for instance, would take in order to plant there's a there is a movement for planting a trillion trees, a trillion trees would take up the entire domestic United States, okay, so it's not scalable. on that level, there's too much displacement, there's too much valuable farmland, it would it just, it couldn't work at that level, probably alone. Now, of course, this is a giant problem that, you know, we're going to, we're hoping that a whole bunch of technologies will come into this space into the carbon removal space to do the work, there's plenty of room for everyone in this space. That's how enormous the problem is. Other technologies that you hear about are like bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. And that's where trees are grown, so that they can or other or other plants or grow so that they can be cut down, burned for fuel and capture the co2 and then inject that down into the ground. It has the same issues of scaling as planting a trillion trees, you got to grow up those trees in order to to, to burn them for fuel, and then you also have to, or you're going to end up deforesting already existing areas. There's a number of other technologies like enhanced mineral weathering, where you're like spreading rocks, everywhere, like clenching up rocks and spreading them out. And that's a chemical, I don't know very much about that technology. So I won't even talk about it. But it is another one that's a soil based technology. And then when it comes to direct air capture are the ones that a lot of people are familiar with there. That's like, usually, you see these big, like kind of air handler plans. And that's a solvent or solvent technology in the case of climeworks, which I think is a leader in this space. That's a sorbent technology, that as co2 comes in, it's captured. And then it's heated up in, I think, mixed with a solvent and then put underground injected deep underground, like a mile and a half or two miles underground. When people talk about death, they usually it's a foregone conclusion that we're going to inject all this co2 down into the earth. It's never been done, though, before on this kind of scale. There are issues that we think that, you know, in order to inject deep into the ground, you're going to pass up water tables. And, you know, like you've mentioned in your introduction, Deena, I mean, there's going to be lots of pipelines that have to exist in order to to shove this all of the co2 billions of tons underground. We could go on about it. I've read one. One report that it would require another 65,000 miles of pipeline to exist by 2050, which is 12 times the amount The pipeline that we have today. So, I mean, do we even have the resources to do something and pipe

Dina Rasor: 30:08

and pipelines are so popular, you're right, that to get the public to buy into something like that, when they're already fighting oil pipelines, because of the spills and whatever, you know, I just don't see how that even even if it worked, which I'm not convinced it is, I think it's some sort of political impossibility in the United States to build that much pipeline.

Gregory A. Williams: 30:32

Okay, I think you're, you're holding back on the punch line, though. So let's, let's, let's get to the the form in which you capture and store the carbon, which I think is

Beth McDaniel: 30:43

so Exactly, okay. So, um, our capture, I mean, our storage, or our end of life, for the co2 is depends on what we want it to be. You can join in Steve, if you want. But if we want the end used to be something like cellulose, which is in itself a durable form of sequestration, then we actually have engineered algae in order to over produce cellulose. We can take hours and put it underground to Okay, that's not we're not limited, we just don't need to and we have no real we don't really want to but it could be shoved injected down under the ground, but we can also sequester it in a form of cellulose. Now, cellulose can be used in a variety of different it's a very valuable but byproduct, this is a like a clear bacterial cellulose you could practically see through it can be used in anything from, from the medical industry to clothing to, to building materials, and even makeup. And so in some of those have more or less durable sequestration than others, but and then the other another possibility and there are many, but another possibility would be that we would biochar, the resulting algal biomass that results from the co2 I mean the carbon capture coatings growing up on the surfaces, they're going to produce algal biomass, and we can harvest that, and biochar which is a recognized form of carbon sequestration of durable sequestration for hundreds of years and results in also a valuable byproduct, which is biochar is a soil amendment, which helps soils capture, retain more water and can make them even soils even a better carbon sink. So we try to make this a very circular, cyclical process, we recycle everything, everything is natural, I mean, the ingredients we use in our paint you can eat and you probably have without knowing it before. And so we want this to be in at the very basic level of very environmentally friendly thing.

Dina Rasor: 33:05

Solution. Okay, so I'm magic I think we've the audience probably by now so yeah, I'm starting with seeing and like it, but what are you my understanding is you're going to take PCB PCB P and fight piping and coated in the inside explain what the factory would look like, you know, the like, the actual plant that's going to do this, what and the actual where the like, and where they like and type bacteria that's going to grow.

Gregory A. Williams: 33:39

So before we get into that, I wanted to ask a high level question. I think if I understand the the paper that Dee and I both read correctly, that is meant to be an exercise in which you try to create the most dense and most effective application of your technology conceivable see that you can generate that very low cost per metric ton of carbon sequestered, but that's but your approach is not limited to application and those kinds of purpose built factories, you could paint essentially anything with this.

Steve McDaniel: 34:14

Let me see if I can, if I can answer you, okay. That's what we do is we build paints and coatings, we formulate them for all sorts of things. And, but just like in the natural systems, those natural systems have to be kind of placed in exactly the right niche, the right sunlight, the right moisture, the right nutrients and everything so that they will work. Okay, so we're not talking about painting carbon capture coatings on the the top of the Empire State Building, okay? They're going to be painted on the surfaces that we control that we can easily harvest the biomass from and easily turn into biochar that those are two very important ingredients. Okay. And so Although you're right, the surfaces are not really constrained, that they have to be surfaces that we have access that we control. Okay. And so to answer your question, I think I'm answering your question, imagine, I'm sure that you have been to dock or freight terminal or whatever, you've just seen piles and piles of piles and piles of sort of milky plastic containers that are in cages, and they just stack them up stacking up stacking them up stack. And those are called Intermediate bulk cargoes, containers, okay. They're, they're precisely one cubic meter in volume. And they have been used for years and years and years and the practice with their waste. And they're readily available commercially, we intend and we already have, I wish we could show you the videos, we have taken sheets that we have painted, that are all meter square, and stack them up inside these cargo containers that we're getting control on, we can give them the light they need, we control the humidity that's in the box. And that's usually all you got to do. And then they grow quite well. And since you can stack them vertically quite high, you can go right on up and we call it atmospheric farming. We just go keep going up and up and up and up into the atmosphere. That's where our product is. co2 is there. And that's where we want to be in as much of it as we can get, and then have a way to actually get that Matt amassed biomass out, and biochar Gotcha. Yeah.

Dina Rasor: 36:44

Okay. And then. So, we get that, that idea. And so the idea is, when it gets how many you one point, I remember reading about how many years you can go, before you have to act, this is part of the low maintenance part of it is how many years you can go where you actually, you know, you just have to get, let it keep growing, keep moving, and then you harvest it, and then you can start over again. So explain that process that that doesn't require a huge amount of labor and, and space.

Steve McDaniel: 37:17

Well, first of all, let me let me begin with again, I have to keep back. Nobody really pays attention to paint guys. Okay, but, but the truth of the matter, but the truth of the matter is, the paint is the hero here, okay. And the reason that paint is MBS best term paint is the hero, we formulated this paint. So for instance, it will pull water out of the atmosphere, you don't have to water these things. They stay moist. And we're perfecting that as we go. They pull what they need out of the atmosphere, they get the these, these coatings have a free gas exchange, and but they retain water. Alright, we've tried to minimize the water vapor going out, maximize the coming in, we also try to be sure that there's plenty of co2 at all times. So they're never, there's never a lack of co2. All right. And in addition to that, we were we can grow them for a very long time in our in our labs situations. We've grown them for, you know, a year or so. And they sound nice and green and they're sitting there in their little surface or whatever. They they may not be producing as much co2 after a point in time. And it may there may be a diminishing returns that you'll harvest at that point. Okay, but to answer your question data is quite quite long. Now, in the LCA TA, we actually did a a conservative, moderate and very optimistic harvest cycle. Those were measured in months, up to a year, and then I think it was two years and then another was five years. It depends the harvest cycle also depends on the speed that you want to go. Obviously, if we are harvesting more quickly and taking that biomass and putting it into biochar, then we are actually pulling down more carbon and sequestering it faster. So that harvest cycle is dependent in some ways about the speed if biochar is where you want to get, if on the other hand, like Beth was saying bacterial cellulose, you may let this that accumulate for months, I mean years and years, and then then go ahead harvested. Yes, yeah.

Beth McDaniel: 39:32

Fixed in the paint until you decide to harvest it, it's not going to degrade but in readmit, right is what it would do in nature if it wasn't in paint.

Dina Rasor: 39:42

Okay, okay, that that sounds good. It's one of the course one of the things of carbon capture the traditional carbon capture is out of energy it takes and how you make that energy. You know, well, it'd be great if it was renewable but you know, may not be there but then you're taking renew Double energy from somewhere else. And if you if you use oil and gas fossil fuel your you know, it's what do they always call this the net, you know, net zero and all this kind of stuff which gets by the way, Melissa manipulated a lot. So how are you? What kind of energy is requirements involved with your carbon capture coatings? Isn't it is it much less than the traditional

Beth McDaniel: 40:27

way? I'll start by answering this and he'll probably finish it. It depends on like what I was saying earlier in, in the podcast. And that is what are the are the boundaries around what you're analyzing at this point in that LCA that you were reading. That was a that was a solar energy, for the most part, just solar energy, okay. And so what you would have is you would have modules, now, these modules might be a meter cubed, or they might be the size of a freight car or whatever, spread out receiving solar energy. And that's pretty much the energy source. Okay, that takes a lot more land. One benefit to this technology is that there's it's a flexible technology, it can be used, with or without energy. So if we were to use some sort of waste energy, or waste heat to to make some sort of energy, a low cost low or no cost energy, then we can shrink that footprint of the facility. So it's a lot smaller, because then we can stack it and we using energy so that we could go both ways, but we would only use waste energy in that situation. And that would allow us, for instance, to also pull down point source emissions from an industrial slipstream as well.

Steve McDaniel: 41:50

Let me add to that a little bit. And that is in the study that you saw. And let me let me segue real quickly. The reason we published this study so fast, and we took a year to get all the data, but then we brought in the team from Colorado State University, Professor Jason Quinn, and had them take a third party independent look at the thing. And the reason we publish it so fast is for some of the reasons that you mentioned, Dina is that they're all over the place. People are claiming this people are claiming that and and what needs to happen is this line in the sand needs to be drawn. And it needs to say you have to do it cradle to grave, every penny of cost and every molecule of carbon. That's what you have to do. And that's what this study does. And the the industry requirements, it turns out, if you look at the study are quite low for the reasons of best notes. This is primarily solar irradiance. The little bit of electricity that's used is actually photovoltaic. And we use a little bit of natural gas for the biochar and, and a little bit of diesel. But beyond that is quite low. All right. If you if you look it up, sorry.

Dina Rasor: 43:03

That's okay. I mean, go ahead. Go ahead.

Steve McDaniel: 43:06

Right, if you look at other systems, and I'm, by the way, I don't think of our other technologies as competitors. I think that's silly to look at like, these are colleagues, we better hope that we have a billion tools in the toolbox. Okay. Our colleagues what so when I talk about se kleinburg. So it's not only because they're there, they're so out there and people talk about it all the time. climeworks has has a, a removal efficiency range from about 9% efficiency, up to about 97% of efficiency. And it depends whether or not they're sitting on that geyser in Iceland or not. If they have the waste energy, that wastes energy in the form of state heated steam, then now thinking what they do better than we do. Our efficiency is around 50%. problem, though, is in that what's more important back then, that efficiency is scalability. There's only so many geysers, okay, if you can't scale it, then figure out where you are moderately and scale that. So that's what we're doing our efficiencies around 50 data 50% We think we can get it higher, especially if we use waste energy. But we can we call it location agnostic. You can stack these intermediate bulk cargo things anywhere on dirt. on asphalt. Yeah, on top of your building. Right.

Dina Rasor: 44:43

Okay. So, you're, what you're saying is that you think that you're chatting, you've got to more friendly technology and getting the gigaton level carbon removed and potential fear carbon coatings. Take advantage of that geometric progression. So in other words, you know, how much more is it going to how fast you can do it and how much you can scale it up and how quickly because we all know time is of the essence.

Steve McDaniel: 45:16

Well I wish the picture was that rosy. Okay. But here's the truth. And this is a truth that we, after we did the for the X Prize, we had to do everything you see in that, in that paper that we sent to you. We had to do all of that and model a 1 million ton per year facility. And we did and everything you see that paper is what we talked about. That's

Beth McDaniel: 45:45

the cost that came out, right, it was a 629.

Steve McDaniel: 45:47

But when we looked at that star, okay, so when we looked at that, though, I started thinking about gigatons. Let me just put this, I have to think about this all the time. Let's talk about the past. What is 1000 days ago? That's about 2.74 years ago. In other words, you were three years younger. Okay, what is that million days ago? That's 20 740 years. Okay. And that's before Jesus was born, Rome was being founded about that time. Okay. What is a billion giga, a billion days in the in the past? That is about 2,739,000 to 726 years ago. Back then, the very first humans were probably abusing their very first not homo sapiens, Homo habilis, was starting to use tools. So when we're talking about a billion, y'all, it's, it's mind boggling. Okay? And you and if you're going to say you're going to tackle this problem, you got to come up with a gigaton solution. So remember, our equation, right of capture, driven primarily by speed and limited photosynthesis, times surface area. The thing that we can manipulate here is surface area, we can do pretty good, like we told you on land and vertical surfaces building in life. But the most surface on the earth is the ocean, the marine environment. So Dr. Nobles on our team, who is the curator of the University of Texas, algae collection, said, Steve, you, you're forgetting something. Yes, you have these modular IBCs. They said also, something that's modular, you have is these sheets, these painted sheets, he said they float. Why don't you just turn them over and lay them down horizontally on top of a marine surface. And so we have started looking at that very carefully. We're pretty excited about it, we can get to gigaton. If we do that we can get to get done. And in fact, we're already negotiating space in the labs and some of their expertise at San Francisco State University. They are right there on San Francisco Bay. And we will be building float. We call them coating float sheets pretty quickly, and starting to test them on marine surfaces.

Dina Rasor: 48:19

Well, when you do I was I am in the San Francisco Bay area. So I'd love to come out and watch it and then we could do a follow up. Podcast on how that works. Okay, you talk about the X Prize, talk about the X Prize and how did he win this prize? And how does it work? And who's sponsoring it? And of course, we're always interested, where's the money coming from? Cuz because we are, we are very concerned about the amount of fossil fuel money in you know, that. That is the amount of fossil fuel money that's involved. And then the genuine being genuine that this really wants to do this for carbon capture for the environment, permanent versus carbon capture so we can continue to burn foil fossil fuel?

Steve McDaniel: 49:04

Well, I'll accept the answer that I'm sorry. I wouldn't go ahead. Because she has been key in both the XPrize administration as well as something else she's going to talk to you about in that regard. But I want to say since you're ACEF San Franciscan, okay. Our our our ocean embodiment will be there up in Tiburon. Next to the bay. It's beautiful up there. Nobody ever been up there.

Dina Rasor: 49:31

In Yeah, no, I'm very close. Not too far from where I live. All right.

Steve McDaniel: 49:35

And then 40 miles, just east of that is our first pilot scale facility at Tracy. Right next to the Tracy renewable energy facility, where a friend of mine Frank Schubert is directing amazing biomass conversion facility up in the San Joaquin Valley. So please, come on over to Tracy come up to Tiburon and come on over to Tracy.

Dina Rasor: 49:57

Well, let me know that that would be really good. I'd love to do so. Man on the street stuff where we go around, talk to people and have a podcast be, you know, in that way, okay, so explain the XPrize to us and how you guys got involved and who, who, who backs it and all that.

Beth McDaniel: 50:13

So the XPRIZE, a lot of people don't realize what the XPrize is the XPrize is, is a big prize purse that and there's a lot of different x prizes for usually addressing some big societal problem, something like poverty, or, you know, food shortages or things like that, in this case, this X Prize in it in it, it promotes innovation, every XPrize is about you know, innovating to to get a solution to whatever this big problem is, in this case, an XPrize was set up for carbon removal systems and financed by Elon Musk. And there's $100 million prize purse for this is the biggest prize ever given away. So in order to, to be awarded a a share of that 100 million dollar prize purse, its first prize is 50 million, I think. And then second is 30 and 20. Then you have to pull down, you have to capture and sequester 1000 tons of co2 over the course of a year, you have to model costs for that type of capture sequestration model. Technology, you have to model costs at the million time level, and then you have to show that you can do it at the gigaton level, you just have to do a proposal at the gigaton level. And so we are planning on pulling down the 1000 tonnes by the end of the well the contest is ends on Earth Day, April 22. I think 2025. And so by then we will think we will pull down 1000 times and sequestered it's successfully eligible for the prize. Okay,

Dina Rasor: 52:09

so that sounds good.

Gregory A. Williams: 52:10

Maybe this may be a good time to ask the question. You know, I think oftentimes X PRIZE contestants are groups of scientist or parties other than functioning commercial enterprises. And if I understand correctly, you are in the business and have been in the business of making these kinds of payments for quite some time. So while this particular application may be experimental, you have lots of operational commercially successful experience making these kinds of coatings. That's correct.

Steve McDaniel: 52:50

Yeah. Okay. In fact, we're, you know, sometimes we're looking at a little scans and going, you're a paint company, you're gone for the X Prize for carbon removal. Please explain. Okay,

Beth McDaniel: 53:03

we're right in our lane we're writing. And we look for functionality in nature and pull it out in nature and harness it and put it into a coding system. And that's what we've done here.

Steve McDaniel: 53:15

Okay, and add one thing about the X Prize has a incredibly aggressive schedule. Okay, we, we by 20, the by around the first, first of 2025. In other words, in about a year and a half or so, you have to have already pulled down that 1000 times. So you can show it to the judges, and then they can award you sometime in April, on the basis of that what you prove to them. Okay, so it's very aggressive.

Dina Rasor: 53:43

Wow, that sounds interesting. Okay. Well, I also see that you have both lawyers and you and you have a law firm. And how's that involved in your carbon capture? coating? Yeah, at the heart of

Beth McDaniel: 53:59

what out of everything we do at reactive surfaces, there's an IP law firm. And so we are we vigorously and rigorously protect our IP, and we know how to do it. Trade secrets and such. And so we have, well, your audience can't see it, but a wall of patents. That is right behind us. And that's so that's just part of what we do on a daily basis. We're always we're protecting it from day one.

Steve McDaniel: 54:32

Okay, good. You want to hear something weird? Yeah. Yes, we always protect our IP, both the IP from a patent standpoint, from a commercial advantage standpoint, from trade secret standpoint, but in this particular case, it's a little odd. We're less worried about it. Because what we want is to achieve the goal and it will operate. If we can give people everything I want to go for instance, to the people that were that want to push things down a hole and just say, Get just just give us the co2. Sequester. Don't Don't put it down a hole, give us your co2, I will show you how to do it. Okay, so yes, we do rigorously protect our intellectual property. But in this case, we are quite willing to share.

Dina Rasor: 55:26

Good. Okay, great. I think that the other thing that I was looking at, because this is of course, my, my ignorance of this is, you say, at the end life of the cutting, you can biochar at the coating for stable carbon sequestration. And we talked about putting it in soil. And I understand that it's not really as bad as making charcoal. But so could you explain the biochar coating and, you know, anything that burns anything? Sounds like it burns. So a lot of the environmental say no more burning. So how is this? How is this not putting carbon back in?

Steve McDaniel: 56:08

Right, actually, not an art technology, but you'll hear people talking about the trillion tree initiative. And some sort of cheeky people said, well say, Well, why don't you just not cut down a trillion trees and burn them? That'd be a lot more advantageous, okay. And there's some logic to that. Okay. Bio charring is a very well known durable sequestration technique. It's been a it's been perfected or a great period of time. The one cool thing about biochar is there's a lot of fuel in biomass, especially in things like diatoms, they have oil, literally droplets of oils. That's how they monitor how far up and down in the water column they are, how much oil they have in their center. But anyway, the point is, biochar has been so perfected is that we can pull the energy from the biomass itself. And we can create something called sin gas. And we can create something called biochar oil. Okay, utilizing those fuels, putting those back into the system, it is basically self energizing. All right, they recently are recycling the waste product. That's correct. And once it gets into the biochar state is it's it's a lot more carbon than charcoal. I mean, it's about 90% Carbon. Okay, there's some other things in there but not much. It's mainly carbon. All right. So that's, that's how it works. Especially okay.

Dina Rasor: 57:41

Okay, is this possible? I'm sorry, go ahead. I was gonna.

Gregory A. Williams: 57:47

So I think that addresses where the energy comes from, but but typically burning an oil does release carbon into the, into the atmosphere. So how does that chemical process work and in this case, and explain the difference between combustion and I hope my pronouncing this right, pyrolysis?

Steve McDaniel: 58:09

Yeah. Pyrolysis is something that is done virtually without oxygen. So it is burning, in a sense, okay. But it's primarily nitrogen. And there's only a little bit of oxygen in there to basically ignite it, okay. And when that when you when you combust these combustible materials and a nitrogen environment, okay, you produce very little co2. It goes primarily into carbon. Having said that, remember, we're in the business of Point Source carbon. So if there's any carbon coming out of the pirate visors, we can certainly capture it and put it in and put it through a coating system and capture it. Algae love carbon, they love carbon, we need carbon. Okay, yeah.

Dina Rasor: 58:56

Okay. And kit, is it possible to capture other greenhouse gases with this system? Or is co2, co2, the main product because like, everyone's freaking out about methane now, because of all the leaking out of fossil fuel pipelines,

Steve McDaniel: 59:11

is a very legitimate concern. Methane, as you probably well know, is a much stronger greenhouse gas than co2. And we'll talk about why that is, but let's not do that right now. Remember that, that methane is B is his burnable. And so that's why you'll see it being flared many, many places, okay. Many dumps around the world. I was just reading about India, they have spontaneous fires, that breakout because of the methane has ignited there. Okay. So once when methane burns, it produces hydrogen and co2. If we we can pull because remember, our technology is agnostic as to the location. So if you've got a flare or a plant are a dump or a coal mine spent coal mine that methane is still coming out of it. You can place these these devices next to the source and capture, take the methane ignited and capture the co2. That's we haven't done that yet. Okay, but we believe that that's very doable. I thought you were going to ask me another question, though. Are there? Are there other gases that we can what we call atmospheric farm? And the answer is yes. In fact, we've done it and published a paper on it. Nitrogen is something that we need as a society, we need nitrogen for all sorts of plastics, nitrogen for medicines, we need nitrogens for farming in the form of fertilizer, we got to have that. All right. Well, the way we mainly get that right now is the haber bosch process is extremely dirty. And apparently, as it is, is responsible for somewhere between one and 2% of the total carbon emissions on planet Earth each year, we've got to come up with a better way to get nitrogen out of the atmosphere and convert it to ammonia. Well, we're lucky by blue green algae have some cousins, and they're called nitrogen fixing bacteria. You we have taken and replaced the carbon capturing bacteria with nitrogen fixing bacteria. And we have been able to obtain ammonia that way. So if we can do that, and we have proven that we can in the lab, then there, then we can pretty instantly knock down one to 2%. If we can prevent the use of the haber bosch process. One other thing, and then I'll be quiet about it. All right. Remember that photosynthesis is taking carbon dioxide and combining it up with water. sunlight and water are converted to a sugar compound, glucose plus, and here's the here's the trick. Oxygen. Oh two. When you are able to produce oxygen through a process, then you can oxygenate things. Many places in the ocean are dead. Because the oxygen levels are so low. San Francisco Bay. I mean, it's pretty. It's pretty sad. The estuaries.

Dina Rasor: 1:02:29

Okay, not quite not quite now. It's all right. It's not nearly as bad as what's coming out of the Mississippi River. And that giant did so Oh, absolutely.

Steve McDaniel: 1:02:38

I agree with you there. Yeah. But there are kids out to the water around the planet that need that oxygen. They also need to remove the co2, but they need that oxygen. So when we say we're mining co2, we're also producing oxygen. So that makes sense. Yeah, and because we've got it, we can capture it. When I'm not saying we're gonna make bottles of Boston. It's just producing it and and letting go for the system.

Beth McDaniel: 1:03:06

But when he says Just to add to what he's saying, what he's saying is our system can be modified by just changing out the algae to a different kind of algae, and we're capturing a new greenhouse gas nitrogen,

Steve McDaniel: 1:03:17

and we publish these results. Okay. One more thing before I get leave the gases. I'm sorry, I get so excited about this. In fact, we have we think that pretty soon I want best to talk about 40 lead an initiative and international initiative that we're getting into. They're very excited about the possibility of us taking and capturing the nitrogen in the form of ammonia. And then catalytically cracking that ammonia to produce hydrogen. And hydrogen is an alternative fuel.

Dina Rasor: 1:03:50

Yeah, and it's not one of those fake clean hydrogens like like blue hydrogen or hydrogen. It's the real green. That means the blue hydrogen is a fate that's

Steve McDaniel: 1:04:02

blue hydrogen is is two electrodes in a bucket of water, the electricity coming from natural gas. Green hydrogen is the same thing. Only the electricity is coming from solar power or wind power. We like to call ours a blue green hydrogen is coming from blue green back. Thanks. Okay,

Dina Rasor: 1:04:23

Greg, any more questions that you might have?

Gregory A. Williams: 1:04:27

Not for me? No. That's been very enlightening.

Steve McDaniel: 1:04:31

Can we Yeah. And talk to you about could we talk to you about this introduction? I'd like for bets explain to us very excited. Sure. Sure. Go ahead.

Beth McDaniel: 1:04:39

Yeah, um, I think you guys know James Scott, and he's head of the embassy row project and then biotech pre accelerator and started an NGO called NGO called net zero and we were contacted by him and about two months ago. And then we just been on this trajectory ever since but I just returned from DC a couple days ago where I met with well, the I met with some folks in the Bulgarian embassy embassy. They Well, we've Steve and I had Steve, it presented there a couple of weeks ago at the National Press Club. And they had heard his presentation. And about carbon capture coatings were very excited about the technology and asked us to come back. And so they've agreed to do a trade mission. And also, they want to build a pilot facility, kind of like the one that we're doing in Tracy, California, over in Bulgaria, in order to be a launch pad into the EU for this technology. So we're very excited about that. And you know, in a couple months, we've gone from Texas to international and so who knows where we'll end up, but I think we're going to end up in the EU.

Steve McDaniel: 1:05:52

People who say say, you know, are we going to be able to do it? And I always say if we can get the public will. And if we can get the political will to do so. Yes, we can. Well, Bulgaria has both the public and the political will to do so very clearly.

Dina Rasor: 1:06:09

Okay. All right. Well, I want you to know that we are going to put all your reports, all the things you've talked about all the all the videos you want in whatever on our website, on our blog, on our website, we're so when people go, when people go to listen, they can go to our website and get it in, and then go to your website and get the information. So we want to make sure this this gets out. It's It's really amazing. I, I'm really appreciative with this. My father was a PhD physicist, and he liked to tinker in this kind of stuff to sense that he was always trying to go look beyond the obvious. And so you I can tell that as a scientist, you're you're you're you're a tinkerer, and I like that, you know, instead of just buying whatever they say, has to be done. And then quite impressive, what you've done, and I will be happy to come down and follow you. And you know, I may ask some really pointed questions, but it sounds it sounds like you know, you're not going to be getting any government money soon. Are you thinking of that?

Steve McDaniel: 1:07:17

Well, that's an interesting question. There are some initiatives within the federal government to promote these kinds of things. And in terms of tax exemptions, so there are some programs and we're aggressively going after that, because it reduces our costs dramatically. All right. And

Beth McDaniel: 1:07:38

finance plan by money. I forget what it's called. Yeah, sorry, this gets into the moment. But yeah, there is money for carbon removal. Yeah.

Dina Rasor: 1:07:49

A lot of money, a lot of money for carbon, renewable, nubile, but I'm forgetful. Fortunately, it's being hijacked very quickly. Okay. So keep us keep us up on that, too. Because we're always very interested in finding if you're finding that the federal government's not very responsive, or you're getting elbowed out by the more traditional ones. We really would like to hear about that, because we want to see how the government's doing. We're watching the government spend, and we're looking at the private sector and to see what what they're doing. So when once you get to the government's force, we might like to have you come back.

Gregory A. Williams: 1:08:24

Thank you so much. Yeah. So once again, I want to identify you by name. This is Dr. Steve McDaniel, and and Beth McDaniel of founders and leaders of reactive surfaces, a company that makes paints that do all kinds of amazing things. And we've been talking about carbon capture and sequestration tonight. So we will have links on our webpage for you to continue learning about these technologies. And so I hope you'll visit climate money watchdog.org again to learn more about us and consider making a donation. So thanks again, and we look forward to our next episode.