CFN Colloquium (in-person)

The 2022 report, Mitigation of Climate Change, released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests that we will need to remove 5.5 gigatons of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere by 2100 to limit global warming to 1.5°C. The ocean is a promising reservoir for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) because it contains approximately 45 times more carbon than the atmosphere, and acts as a natural control for atmospheric CO2 levels. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report, A Research Strategy for Ocean-based Carbon Dioxide Removal, recently recommended a $125 million research program to better understand overarching challenges for all ocean CDR approaches. Ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) is a specific ocean CDR approach that reverses ocean acidification, especially close to shore, and draws additional CO2 from the air into oceanic bicarbonate where it is stored for over 10,000 years, mimicking the Earth's natural mechanism for regulating the atmospheric CO2 concentration. In this talk, I will review the latest results from my group on electrochemical ocean alkalinity enhancement experiments being performed at Flax Pond Marine Lab at Stony Brook University, as well as describe the efforts to commercialize this technology at Ebb Carbon, Inc. in San Carlos, CA. Finally, I will highlight research challenges and opportunities to which the nanoscience community could lend their expertise.

Bio-sketch: Matthew Eisaman is an Associate Professor with tenure at Stony Brook University in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering with a guest appointment at Brookhaven National Lab. Since 2021, he is also the CTO and Co-Founder of Ebb Carbon, a startup based in San Carlos, CA that is commercializing ocean-based carbon dioxide removal (ocean CDR) and ocean acidification reversal using electrochemical ocean alkalinity enhancement. Prof. Eisaman served as a technical advisor to X, formerly known as Google[X], from 2014 - 2021, and in 2016 he led Project Foghorn at X, which aimed to create carbon-neutral liquid fuel from seawater. Prior to Stony Brook, Prof. Eisaman was a Physicist at Brookhaven National Lab from 2011-2014, an Applied Physicist in the Cleantech Innovation Program at Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, CA from 2008-2011, and an NRC Postdoc at NIST from 2006-2008. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard and A.B. in Physics from Princeton in 2006 and 2000, respectively. His research has covered a broad range of clean-energy technologies, including photovoltaics and CO2 removal. Prof. Eisaman's current research is focused on ocean CDR, including: the optimization and commercialization of electrochemical ocean CDR; its effects on marine ecosystems; establishing and improving methods for measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV); designing and performing the experiments and tests needed to gain the social license to operate; and the potential for colocation and co-benefits of electrochemical ocean CDR with other carbon removal approaches.