by Alisha Fredriksson says she had one motivation for starting her latest business venture: “to tackle the climate crisis and make as much of an impact as possible.”
Fredriksson is CEO of British climate technology startup Seabound, which is developing an onboard carbon capture device for cargo ships.
Global shipping, which accounts for about 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, like many other industries, is aiming for net-zero emissions by or around 2050. However, solutions to help companies achieve this goal continue. “I think I may be an impatient person, but for me shipping is not moving fast enough to decarbonize,” says Fredriksson.
Seabound’s technology, which can be housed in one or more standard shipping containers, captures engine exhaust and passes the CO2 contained therein through an accelerated version of a natural process that has occurred in the oceans for billions of years.
The container is filled with pebbles made of calcium oxide, called lime, which absorb the CO2. “You can basically imagine a box of rocks,” says Fredriksson, “the exhaust gases flow through there and the CO2 is sucked up and converted into limestone, while the rest is released.”
Seabound conducted a pilot test with global shipping company Lomar that reportedly captured 90% of the CO2 from ship exhaust. – Seabound
It’s a fairly simple process, she adds, because the CO2 is simply captured. “That’s all we do on board – we don’t separate the CO2, we don’t clean it or compress it, because these steps are very energy intensive and quite complicated to do on board. That’s why we moved the complicated things to land instead.”
Once the ships dock at a port, the pebbles can be offloaded at a specialized facility for further treatment, including capturing the CO2 for reuse or recycling as construction material.
Seabound conducted tests that it said confirmed the feasibility of the process by capturing 80% of carbon and 90% of sulfur, a pollutant already captured onboard about 5% of the global merchant fleet using similar systems. Fredriksson says the company is in discussions with several shipping companies and is preparing for commercial launch before the end of 2025.
A simple retrofit
Fredriksson founded Seabound with co-founder Roujia Wen in 2021, at age 26, but already had a resume that included launching a climate program at a global nonprofit and building a maritime green fuel startup called Liquid Wind . In 2023, she was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Europe Social Impact list and MIT’s Tech Review Innovators Under 35 list.
Alisha Fredriksson, CEO of Seabound. – Seabound
“It is still quite uncertain what the future of decarbonized shipping will look like,” she says. “There are alternative fuels, the main competitors are green methanol and green ammonia, but there is no fuel supply (for them) yet and these fuels are not compatible with the existing fleet. So we have about 100,000 ships on the water today that will continue to emit CO2 for the foreseeable future.”
One of the advantages of the Seabound system, adds Fredriksson, is that it generates heat and therefore does not require additional energy or use fuel. The space occupied on board – which determines how much money the ship loses due to reduced cargo capacity – depends on the size of the ship and the amount of CO2 to be captured. “Imagine a 20-foot container,” she says. “You could have as many as you want depending on how much you want to capture. We work with our customers to determine the target percentage of CO2 to capture, but in general we try to limit (the space we use) to ideally less than 1% of cargo capacity.”
Installation is relatively simple as only piping is required to connect the Seabound container to the engine exhaust system. Once the ship completes its journey, the pebbles – which become slightly heavier but not larger – are offloaded by swapping the Seabound containers for new ones.
Once in port, the pebbles can undergo the opposite reaction as on board, heating them in an oven to separate the CO2 and make them ready to be absorbed again; The resulting pure CO2 can be processed into products such as fuels or chemicals or stored underground. This closed-loop model would make the pebbles reusable, but requires special infrastructure to be built in ports or nearby to complete the process.
The Seabound system is housed in a standard shipping container. Depending on the amount of CO2 to be captured, several can be installed. – Seabound
Another option is to use the pebbles as a building material since they are made of limestone, a common ingredient in concrete. While this would require less infrastructure at ports, there are still uncertainties about the use of the limestone as it has been exposed to contaminants from ship exhaust. “It would not be suitable for particularly high-value applications such as water treatment, as there may be contamination there,” says Fredriksson. For example, you could imagine it as an aggregate in concrete or road construction, where sensitivity to contaminants is lower.”
Seabound completed a pilot with global shipping company Lomar last year, placing one of its devices aboard a medium-sized 3,200-container ship, where it achieved 80% carbon capture. “Although this was a prototype, it was a crucial technical proof and a milestone for us. And since then, we’ve essentially expanded our commercial products. In the long term, we want to be able to capture carbon on every type of ship around the world.”
A short-term solution?
Interest in on-board carbon capture systems (OCCS) like Seabound’s is growing, but implementing them is not easy.
A project by the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), an association of major oil and gas companies seeking solutions to climate change, and the Global Center for Maritime Decarbonization (GCMD), a Singapore-based climate nonprofit, tested something different System that produced liquefied CO2 made using non-proprietary equipment and processes – so that the results could be shared publicly – on a medium-range oil tanker. The results suggest a potential reduction in CO2 emissions of up to 20% per year, with a fuel consumption reduction of almost 10%.
However, it was also noted that the cost of building and installing such a system on the ship was an estimated $13.6 million. “The implementation of OCCS faces significant challenges, particularly the high capital costs of retrofitting and the operational costs associated with additional fuel consumption,” says Lynn Loo, professor of chemical and biological engineering at Princeton University and CEO of the GCMD. While large-scale costs could fall by up to 75%, she added, the test uncovered other critical bottlenecks, such as the lack of port infrastructure to offload liquefied CO2 and the lack of a global regulatory framework to manage the captured CO2 international waters.
According to Fredriksson, compared to Seabound’s second generation, this project used a more “conventional” form of carbon capture, leaving most of the complex tasks and machinery off-board to reduce costs and increase scalability.
Similar technologies that require nothing to be unloaded at ports are also in development, such as one being tested by Calcarea, an offshoot of the California Institute of Technology, that is designed to release the CO2 directly into the sea as carbonate-rich water .
“We know and like the team there, and I’m really very curious about the possible combination of our solutions,” says Fredriksson, “because we make limestone and they start with limestone.” If we could integrate our technologies, we could potentially double that Capture the amount of CO2 on board by using the same amount of lime as Seabound’s current system.”
According to Tristan Smith, professor of energy and transport at University College London, OCCS could have “a temporary role” before hydrogen-based fuels become more competitive by the mid-2030s. “There is no positive outlook for the use of (OCCS) in shipping,” he says. “That doesn’t mean it’s not popular – it’s attractive to imagine a technology that could enable the continued use of fossil fuels. However, a positive view comes with a simplification of the realities of the business case fundamentals, which are less compelling than solutions tied to renewable energy (green ammonia).”
Faisal Khan, a professor of chemical and petroleum engineering at Texas A&M University and director of the Ocean Engineering Safety Institute, believes that forms of carbon capture on board ships “will become almost mandatory in the coming years, similar to what has happened in the automotive industry.” . with catalysts.”
He sees potential in Seabound’s technology because of the benefits of mimicking a natural process. “The bottleneck remains the efficiency of these processes, because the exhaust (gas) is unfortunately not pure carbon dioxide, but contains many more impurities. And these impurities affect efficiency,” he says.
However, he is optimistic about OCCS’s commercial prospects. “Whether it will endure or stand the test of time until we have better options is uncertain,” he says, “but in the short to medium term these are promising technologies.”
For more CNN news and newsletters, create an account at CNN.com
