[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) - Carbon Negative...
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Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) - Carbon Negative Roads
Hi HN community, we are Haakon, Hans Arne and Kris, co-founders of
Carbon Crusher (https://www.carboncrusher.io). We are developing
and scaling a technology and process that refurbishes roads in a
carbon negative way. Roads with cracks and bumps are often a
result of unstable ground beneath the road surface. There are
currently many ways of repairing such roads, all which are
polluting. You can exchange all of the road, or mill up and reclaim
parts of the road and bind it together with a substance with "glue-
like" properties such as bitumen, or you could add new asphalt,
concrete or gravel on top of the cracks and bumps, then you'll
likely get the same cracks and bumps a year later, since this
doesn't stabilize the soil beneath. Our method is an enhanced, new
way of full depth reclamation, with two main advantages: 1) Our
proprietary built Crusher can chew and crush pretty much everything
including stone and mountain surfaces, meaning we do not have to
extract, transport and add any new masses and can re-use all of the
road, even in rugged terrain like mountainside Norway. 2) Our
binder. It's based on lignin, a waste product from the paper
industry, constituting around 1/3 of the volumes from trees. The
majority of lignin is burnt, we make use of it as a binder in our
roads instead, binding the carbon absorbed by the trees from the
air. Our binder has no negative impact on vegetation, animals,
humans or equipment. It is actually so harmless that our test-pilot
Hans Arne often takes a sip of it to prove it to our customers and
competitors! But it does not taste very good.. Here you see a
video of our Crusher crushing large rocks (thrown in by Hans Arne):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O1uWT5PARDWWHshac128hhv1tRk... In
combination, this results in approximately 20% lower cost compared
to traditional methods, roads that on average last longer between
each time they need repairs, and a reduction of Co2 equivalents
from ~7-10kg positive to 5kg negative pr m2, or approximately 1
tonne net negative per 60 feet we refurbish, of a 2 lane road. We
are innovating to improve efficiency and the carbon effect of both
the Crusher and the binder. For the Crusher we are working on
making it smarter in addition to being powerful, with more and
smarter sensor tech and from being dragged behind a tractor towards
being autonomous, which could increase efficiency by 40-50%. For
the binder we are experimenting with new combinations to store more
CO2, adding to the lignin base we use now. We are looking at a
range of new biological additions such as other types of refined
lignin, other carbon negative materials and potentially
programmable carbon negative molecules that can mimic the favorable
binding properties, and we aim for a 5x increase in carbon capture
efficiency within a few years. We're three climate vikings from
Norway with big hearts, bound together from earlier tech
adventures. Kris dropped out of college at age 19 to found his
first software company, and met his hardware match Hans on another
project 10 years ago. Kris invested when Haakon co-founded Katapult
and started scaling sustainability and tech companies 6 years ago,
and early last year we all excitedly decided to join forces to
build Carbon Crusher. The very first road though, refurbished with
our method, was made 14 years back in Hans Arnes hometown, "Heart
Valley" in Norway. Being able today to drive, touch it and see how
good it still is, is a nice unique competitive edge for us and that
our recent customers appreciate. Even if volumes have been limited
so far it's good to also have actual recent happy customers
(municipalities, cities, counties and a few industrial companies)
as ambassadors, as the road business is very conservative; we have
sometimes struggled with being nicknamed "the tree glue folks"....
To scale our impact faster, we are working on changing from one off
tender projects where we do the full refurbishment service for our
customers, public or private road owners, towards a crushing as a
service model with longer term contracts, licensing of tech to
contractors and less people and hardware involved from our side.
On the product expansion side, we are currently most excited about
developing software using satellite imagery that can monitor road
health and identify repair needs for road owners effectively and
give instant quotes and Co2 savings potential, we call it
"SkyRoads". Further, we are working on new complementary road tech
that can enhance and add to the carbon potential from our solution.
This includes sustainable top layers and capturing and
dissemination of energy captured by the roads. We want to re-
invent the way we think about the 44 million miles of roads
covering our planet, directly emitting over 400 million tonnes CO2
every year in building and maintenance, indirectly more through
heat reflection. Our goal would be to 5x the carbon reduction
potential of our current solution, using roads as a platform for a
host of technologies on carbon reduction. On an annual basis, that
could be 2 Gt each year. It's a very conservative industry with
limited innovation, especially on the climate side, and we believe
someone needs to make those stretched targets. All this inspires
us; to make our planet's roads, which is often overlooked in
climate discussion, a part of the solution. It will require
hardware, biotech and software innovation, and that excites us. If
we succeed, our direct and indirect carbon impact will contribute
in a meaningful way to our shared climate challenges. We are super
excited to launch this and be part of the YC community. Hopefully
this post gave you some new interest in sustainable road tech.
Please do reach out with any questions and we'll try our best to
answer! You are also more than welcome to reach us also by email
any time on contact@carboncrushing.com. Thanks!
Author : haakonzen
Score : 107 points
Date : 2022-03-24 17:40 UTC (5 hours ago)
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Do your estimates include the carbon cost of of the lingen
| transportation network needed to bring the lingen from where it's
| generated to where the road repair is being performed? What does
| that aspect of the cost look like and how does it compare with
| existing resource networks for traditional road repair?
|
| What is the cost comparison per foot of road between traditional
| road repair and your approach (factoring in the maintenance
| interval increase)? Are there any regulatory challenges you've
| discovered that might be roadblocks to you scaling out? For
| example, Google Fiber had pole access issues due to regulations
| passed to benefit existing ISPs. Is there anything like this in
| this space?
|
| Are there any niches where you see particular traction as being
| easier? You've got a big opportunity you're going after so I'm
| curious about where you're starting. For example, maybe you're
| especially attractive in adverse environments like snow +
| mountains. Or maybe cost-conscious towns where you can easily
| partner with local road repair crews and there aren't meaningful
| revenues for larger established players. Not actually sure, just
| curious where your land & expand strategy starts.
| hansarne wrote:
| Thanks for digging into this, awesome questions!
|
| Transport is included in all of our estimates, but we haven't
| yet done the comparison for every location in the world. We are
| working on a tool so we can on the fly update the CO2
| calculation for each customer based on the location in our next
| markets which are North America and Southern Europe. That said,
| traditional road repair uses bitumen from oil production, or
| fly ash from coal power plant, which would also have to be
| transported from their respective source, and both oil, coal
| plant and lignin plants can be found around the world. Our
| current producer has great coverage in Europe and also in North
| America, and we are constantly looking at growing our supplier
| network. We are also focused on transport by electric trains in
| the Nordics and have also ordered Tesla Semis that can help us
| move binders and equipment.
|
| We are 20% cheaper than the traditional method, factoring in
| the maintenance interval (we have a few years longer interval).
| This is with a solid gross margin, so we could also go lower to
| increase demand when needed.
|
| We see a lot of interest from Eastern Europe (Poland + Baltics)
| and also from gravel roads around the world where we have an
| even stronger USPs to the customers. In maintaining gravel
| roads - the only alternative to our method is to put more
| gravel on every other year, which is expensive, time consuming,
| and leaves a terrible Co2 footprint compared to our long
| lasting roads.
| fillskills wrote:
| Tangential question: Has there been a discussion already on why
| HN participants cant invest in such YC startups?
| learndeeply wrote:
| There's no restrictions on investing in YC startups if you
| participate on HN.
| boringg wrote:
| Super fascinating.
|
| Short hand product notes: Lower carbon impact, lower cost. What
| is the product life compared to incumbents?
|
| From a user implementation perspective (IE the city crew): - Do
| they need new training, new equipment etc, how long compared to
| traditional implementation? - Is it easy to import to North
| America? - What are the adoption risks?
|
| Look forward to seeing this in the wild! Interesting that you are
| going for a subscription model.
| hansarne wrote:
| Yes indeed, thanks for the great short hand product notes!
| Lower carbon impact + lower cost + 0-25% more durable
|
| We can supply the crusher hardware, our binders, onsite first
| time PM + remote PMs after that. We now do this in all of
| Europe, UK + North America. Imports are not an issue to North
| America and Carbon Crusher is an American company and we
| already have presence in the state of New York. There is no
| adoption risks as we see it, as long as the training is done
| properly.
|
| The training is mainly operating training combined with daily
| and monthly maintenance. We have an extensive library of remote
| content for training purposes. Typical onsite training is 2
| weeks, if the personell has experience with road maintenance.
| We are also looking at VR training to speed things up on the
| remote training side:)
| ghostbust555 wrote:
| How are you saying this is carbon negative? Don't get me wrong
| the process is impressive and very cool, but the marketing around
| it just feels scammy.
|
| -5kg of carbon per m2? How? The lignin based binder absorbs more
| carbon from the air after it is placed into the road? I may be
| misreading but it seems like these numbers are based on the
| amount of carbon in the lignin itself (i.e. since it isn't burned
| which would be positive, you can count it as negative as it is
| not burned)
|
| If I am wrong on this, please correct me. But it sure sounds like
| a lot of conveniently vague statements to make for nice sounding
| numbers. This would be a shame as even without misleading claims
| of CO2 reduction, the benefit of removing oil from the process
| and replacing it with a renewable source is clear and should
| stand for itself.
|
| If the binder does indeed absorb C02 over time what is the rate?
| What effect does it have on the binders stability? Or if its used
| in its manufacturing how are you sourcing the CO2? What is the
| breakdown timeframe for the binder releasing any sequestered
| carbon back into the atmosphere?
| snewman wrote:
| OP says the lignin is "a waste product from the paper industry"
| and "majority of lignin is burnt". So it sounds like:
| currently, grow tree (pulling carbon from the atmosphere),
| process for paper industry, burn the resulting lignin, carbon
| returns to atmosphere. With this process: grow tree, process
| for paper industry, embed lignin in road material. If the
| lignin remains in the road more-or-less permanently (I asked
| about this in a separate comment), that sounds like legit
| removal; the carbon started out in the air and ends up in the
| road.
| boplicity wrote:
| This sounds like an incredible project -- and very much needed.
| Road building is such a huge source of emissions.
|
| What are the biggest objections that your customers tend to have?
|
| How much is the use of lignin a factor, in terms of long-term
| scaling?
| hansarne wrote:
| Thanks! We are very excited turning roads into a part of the
| climate solution. Road construction and refurbishment is a very
| conservative industry and unfortunately they often want to
| stick to the way they've done things before. But we're working
| on disrupting this leveraging YC, cool green climate tech and
| documentation from our long track record!
|
| There are huge amounts of lignin in the world which is the base
| for our current binder. With our current producer volumes and
| without leveraging synthetic bio we can reach USD 2bn in yearly
| global revenue. If we were to leverage all the current lignin
| supply in the world we could Carbon Crush 1.5million miles of
| roads every year.
| wiz21c wrote:
| > We are Re-inventing roads to solve global problems. At Carbon
| Crusher, we are committed to help solve climate change, making a
| positive impact on our planet.
|
| > Our proprietary built Crusher
|
| Why is "proprietary" important ?
| hansarne wrote:
| Good question! First I think Haakon thinks it sounds A LOT
| cooler. Second, we have been R&D our asses off developing the
| actual Crusher hardware. The current Crusher we have developed
| over the last years is specifically designed for crushing in
| harsh environments and tailored for binding ligning into the
| roads. It is produced, tested over years and works perfectly
| for our purpose now. It is part of our IP and helps us make
| carbon negative roads that are more durable and cost less for
| our road owning customers. Can't wait to share details about
| our next gen crusher thats coming later this years that will
| crush the current one especially on the software/sensor side
| danamit wrote:
| It's a keyword that attract investors.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Some squares here now have a floor made of pebbles mixed with
| some kind of (epoxi?) resine instead of a floor made of concrete
| or just soil. Do you think that it's possible to use lignin as
| the glue instead?
|
| Is the mix with lignin waterproof?
| hansarne wrote:
| Thanks for the question! I do not believe that Lignin is the
| right "glue" in this case. It is quite water resistant, but to
| bind properly, it needs a certain amount of finer particles in
| the mix. If You choose gravel instead of pebbles, it should on
| the other hand work fine.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Your success will depend on some claims you are making. I really
| hope you are just brief here, and have it amply written up
| elsewhere with real data. It always a major let-down when I meet
| with the inventors/idea folks and I find out there is a lot of
| hand-waving about claims, facts, and data.
|
| Good luck!
| kroil wrote:
| Thanks for the comment and totally agree! We've worked through
| our calculations with one of the leading lignin producers
| globally and other experts. We either have or are working on
| third party validation for all of our data to make sure we also
| can provide high quality carbon credits.
| throw82473751 wrote:
| > We're three climate vikings
|
| You had me here! <3
| hansarne wrote:
| Yes! We are the nice vikings, crushing carbon every day! :-)
| cwkoss wrote:
| Very cool project!
|
| In the attached video, was that crushing only or was lignin
| binder being mixed in as well? The output looks dark but kind of
| powdery, I would guess that's soil being mixed in, because I
| don't see a fluid tank on the back of that tractor.
|
| It looks like resulting the particle size is quite small - I
| would assume that some amount of aggregate would be tolerable or
| even beneficial for material strength. Are there gravel sized
| bits under the top surface? Is the output uniform or are there
| distinct layers.
|
| How long does the resulting road need to "set" before cars can
| start driving on it, and how does that compare to traditional
| techniques?
|
| Demo video shows a ~2m wide output, is this system capable of
| making multilane roads yet?
|
| Wish you the best, very clever idea. :D
| hansarne wrote:
| Thank You! You are right! The video shows the first step, which
| is the crushing. Lignin mixing is step 2. The road can be used
| by cars immideatly after compacting, as with other methods.
| However, if You want asphalt on top, it is necessary to let it
| dry for 2-3 weeks to let the water-solved Lignin harden and
| dry. In the video it was already a lot of small particles in
| the ground. We can make rocks smaller, but not bigger:-) The
| sizes of the gravel bits are evenly distributed, but with some
| fines on the top(due to Newton). We are using 2,5 meters
| crushers. That makes it possible to not stop the traffic while
| working.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| How do you propose to deal with fungi/ bacteria which have no
| issue digesting lignin?
|
| Likewise, what would your source of lignin material? How do the
| transportation and processing costs impact your ability to
| generate the parent materials for this process?
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| 290 million years ago, _Agaricomycetes_ fungi evolved the
| ability to breakdown lignin. That is the only time any species
| evolved this ability.
|
| And most rot is actually around the lignin. Amazing material.
| kroil wrote:
| thanks, great fungi question thread! It's true fungi can
| digest lignin. Based on our experience and tests done on our
| roads by the Norwegian Road Authority, our roads have very
| long durability, most of the time longer than expected from
| normal roads, so it seems that fungi hasn't been a problem on
| our roads so far. The lignin is mixed in and stored
| underground (spread in the 10 inches layer) and some of it
| will degrade over time and become part of the soil
| environment. We will need to test other binder formulas more
| extensively in warmer areas with more fungi, and create a
| portfolio of binders suitable for all environments :)
|
| We are working working with some awesome scientists at
| https://www.nmbu.no/en and we will dig deeper into global
| fungi tactics together with them
| alfl wrote:
| This is really cool, congrats and good luck!
| tomarr wrote:
| Hello
|
| I watched your video with the Crusher. For most places having a
| subgrade of rock or good granular material as seen in the video
| would be a luxury for road construction. In general roads on this
| material are fairly stable and it is the more common subgrades of
| clay, silts and sands that have problems normally related to
| drainage issues. Does your solution offer anything for these
| scenariosm?
| hansarne wrote:
| Thanks for diving into this! Yes, our Crusher, method and the
| Lignin binds sand and silts in a great way. If there is a lot
| of clay, we would also like to add some lime to help with the
| internal moist, here we have several carbon neutral solutions.
| Our finished road is more waterproof (compared to a gravel road
| without Lignin f.ex) and our roads helps a lot with the
| draining of water from the road. However, as on every road, the
| shape of the road is important so the water finds the shortest
| way out of the road, and the ditches should be maintained as
| for any other road.
| snewman wrote:
| I love to see creative approaches like this! A couple of naive
| questions:
|
| 1. How long will the carbon remain bound / out of the atmosphere?
|
| 2. How quickly can you scale, and what are the limiting factors
| that (if eased) would allow you to scale faster? (Hiring,
| refining the tech, refining the business proposition, finding
| customers, building hardware, ...)
| haakonzen wrote:
| 2. With the Crushers we have today, we can reduce 25.000 tonnes
| this year, but we could in theory make 10x more Crushers for
| next year taking us to 250.000 tonnes next year. The demand is
| definetely there, scaling the sales & operation is the thing we
| work hard on. That's also why we are working on launching our
| crushing as a service model which will ease both operations and
| logistics globally. Refining and building hardware is not a
| limiting factor per se.
| haakonzen wrote:
| 1. Great question! Different academic experts claim lignin
| would be very stable in roads and stay there for a long time,
| and that when some degradation eventually happens, it will
| sequester downwards and become part of the soil. Deepdive: We
| have made roads 14 years ago which are still stable and in good
| quality today, indicating there hasn't been much degradation of
| the lignin to speak of. Adding here also a quote from an
| academic paper: "... the end-product of lignin decomposition in
| nature contains partially decomposed, fragmented lignin (humus)
| that enters the soil cycle, and remains in this layer for many
| years. Release of H2O and CO2 as decomposition products in this
| layer is extremely limited. Soil bacteria, microfauna, and even
| physical processes may play important roles in the final
| breakdown of humus. This is a slow process and some lignin
| degradation products have soil residence times of centuries
| (Ziekus, 1981)." - So, while we don't have the complete answer
| to speed of degradation yet (workin on it!), it seems it would
| stay beneath the ground far more than long enough to help our
| planet.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Where is the road made 14 years ago? Does lignin resist
| fungus/bacteria in a hot humid place like Brazil?
| hansarne wrote:
| "Great question, we would love to crush carbon in South
| America! Our 14 year old road is in Heart Valley in Norway.
| All of our experience is from Norway so far and our current
| binder works well in similiar climates around the globe. So
| places like Brazil we will need to do testing to find the
| best binder for those environments. We are already in talks
| with Brazilian ligning producers btw. Our goal is to have a
| sustainable binder tailor made for all environments
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