Carbonyx raises $1.2 million to turn mining waste into usable materials

Vancouver-based Carbonyx has a simple pitch: it will take junk from mining, construction, or manufacturing companies and sell the usable materials it extracts.

But that’s just the cover story. 

 “We’re basically a carbon removal company disguised as a materials company.”

Doug Pimlott, Carbonyx

Carbonyx co-founder and CEO Doug Pimlott’s true mission is to make carbon capture economically viable again. In addition to extracting useful materials from waste rock, the University of British Columbia (UBC) post-doctoral fellow’s prototype device helps those rocks accelerate their natural carbon-capturing power by inducing a reaction with electricity and water. 

“When we discovered this approach that can [capture carbon and recover] these valuable materials, then it quickly felt like more than a research project,” Pimlott told BetaKit in an exclusive interview on Friday. “It felt like something that can actually have real impact.”

Pimlott explained that traditional carbon removal technology isn’t scaling fast enough because the market is largely reliant on companies buying carbon credits to offset their carbon footprint. Worse yet, the carbon market’s biggest player, Microsoft, recently told companies that it’s pausing credit purchases. 

“It’s very clear that we need to generate value beyond just carbon credits,” Pimlott said.

That’s what he thinks his fledgling company does well: delivering CO2 storage while generating revenue by producing materials like carbonates, which have industrial applications, and silica, which is used in “everything from tires to toothpaste.”

 “We’re basically a carbon removal company disguised as a materials company,” Pimlott said. 

The startup was born in UBC’s Curtis P. Berlinguette Research Group, where Pimlott helped develop the tech. The group’s namesake chemist, Berlinguette, is Pimlott’s co-founder and advisor, who brings experience from founding other cleantech companies like Cura, Miru, and Boston-based Sora Fuel. Joining them as head of engineering is former BarrelWise hardware director Adrien Noble, and Mia Stankovic, a PhD chemist and expert in the field of electrochemistry. 

The startup, now emerging from academia, has raised $1.2 million CAD in pre-seed funding to expand its technical team with three new hires and to build a demonstration model. The round was led by Vancouver-based angel group WUTIF Capital, with participation from Spring Impact Capital, UBC Venture Funds, and a number of undisclosed angel investors. 

“It’s not every day that you come across a team that has developed a technology to capture CO2 that produces such a profitable byproduct,” WUTIF Capital COO Aaron Stuart told BetaKit in an email. “In a fairly unreliable carbon credits market, this is exactly the type of business you want to find.”

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Pimlott said the demonstration model, roughly the size of a shipping container, will take the company from producing kilograms of carbon-negative material per year to multi-tonnes. Pimlott anticipates his company to have deployment “resembling commercial scale” within two to three years, and hit megatonne extraction capability within 10 years. 

Within that timeframe, he wants to broaden Carbonyx’s portfolio to include critical minerals and rare earth elements. While materials may be what’s listed in the sales brochure, Pimlott said that carbon removal is an essential tool in the fight against climate change.

“We want to fireproof carbon removal against the volatility of the carbon markets [and] against policy,” Pimlott said. “Until we have those answers, we need to find a way to make it make sense in today’s economic and political climate.”

Feature image courtesy Carbonyx.