Carbon removal plant to start packing wood chips into bricks for $100/ton of CO2

A carbon removal startup plans to start operations this week at an Arkansas plant that will turn organic waste into bricks that can be buried, one of dozens of proposed strategies to facilitate the removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere.

Founded in 2023, Graphyte Inc. aims to exploit the carbon-absorbing properties of plants by drying biomass, such as crop residues and sawdust, and packing it into blocks for long-term storage.

The startup, backed by Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy LLC, now expects to start producing the bricks at its first commercial facility by Feb. 9, a spokesperson confirmed in an email.

Graphyte is among a handful of companies in the US trying to lower the cost of "durable" carbon removal strategies that are capable of pulling CO₂ from the air and storing it for at least 100 years. The US Energy Department set a goal to bring the cost below $100 per metric ton of CO₂ for "gigaton-scale" projects by the early 2030s.

In November 2023, Graphyte reached an agreement with American Airlines Group Inc. to offset 10,000 metric tons of the airlines' emissions at a price of $100 per metric ton.

However, the company's first facility in Pine Bluff, Ark., is expected to operate at a much smaller capacity — 50,000 metric tons annually by 2025 — than other planned carbon removal projects. In 2023, Occidental Petroleum Corp. won federal funding to deploy direct air capture on the King Ranch in South Texas, where the oil producer expects to capture 30 million metric tons of CO₂ per year.

Unlike Graphyte's method, which the company calls "carbon casting," direct air capture yields CO₂ in a gaseous state that must be pressurized and injected thousands of feet underground.

Graphyte's particle board-like bricks, meanwhile, need only be buried to keep the carbon out of the atmosphere for centuries, according to the company. Graphyte said it is still seeking a construction debris landfill permit for the bricks produced at its Pine Bluff facility.