Mitico raises $4.3M seed round to capture CO2 using ‘prehistoric chemistry’

The world is in a pickle: Human activity continues to dump too much CO2 into the atmosphere, raising the risk of catastrophic global warming. At the same time, the most climate-friendly way to keep using fossil fuels, carbon capture, has hit a rough patch. Only around 40 facilities worldwide are capturing some of the carbon dioxide they generate, according to the International Energy Administration. Because the installations are too expensive to build and operate, they’ve trimmed global carbon emissions by just 0.01% per year. But one startup thinks that it has found a way to slash the cost of carbon capture using a simple salt that’s been tweaked for industrial duty. “The chemistry that we’re using — the carbonation and decarbonation reaction — that’s what I call prehistorical chemistry. It was there before us, and it will be there after us,” Clément Cid, co-founder and CEO of Mitico, told TechCrunch. Others have proposed using potassium carbonate, but most have avoided it for two ... Read full article.