Charm Industrial

Peter Reinhardt co-founded Charm Industrial while also being CEO of Segment, a customer data platform. He has been involved with a variety of firms in the tech startup space. Peter holds degrees in Maths and Physics from the University of Washington as well as Aerospace Engineering from MIT.

What is the Challenge?

Rising temperatures due to the amount of greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity. 51 billion is the amount of greenhouses gas, in tons, emitted globally each year, which we have to get down to net-zero by 2050. Around 7-8 of those billions will need to come from carbon capture, according to the IEA. That means that we need to move from carbon capture of thousands of tons, where we are today, to capturing several billions of tons of CO2 by 2050. Around half of the reduction capacity needed for 2050 is expected to come from new technologies that are currently at the demonstration or prototype phase. It is therefore critical to invest in new carbon capture technologies.

What is the Solution?

Charm Industrial is working to produce reliable, cost-competitive carbon sequestration from biomass. What this means is that Charm uses plants to capture CO2 from the atmosphere. Biomass is converted into a stable, carbon-rich liquid pumped into the underground. This removes CO2 permanently from the atmosphere.

This happens in three steps:

Cellulosic biomass already captures 100+ Gt CO₂/year. Charm collects it and puts it through a process called fast pyrolysis.

Charm's fast pyrolyzers break down biomass into bio-oil, a liquid rich in carbon but low in energy content.

Charm prepares the bio-oil and injects it into EPA-regulated injection wells, where the bio-oil sinks and solidifies in place for permanent storage.