Mobile Carbon Capture Coming to Railroads? (Updated 5/9)
According to Remora’s website, its objective is to retrofit locomotives and semi-trucks with “zero-backpressure carbon capture,” and to extract and purify up to 90% of the CO2 from the exhaust, “while reducing soot, particulate matter, and NOx to achieve Tier 4.” The company said it intends to sell the purified CO2 and share the revenue with the transportation companies.
For railroads, Remora will place a tender car behind a locomotive “to scrub emissions, preventing them from entering the atmosphere,” NS reported in the Story Yard section of its website on April 28. “Locomotive exhaust enters a containment system allowing CO2 to be stored as liquid and is easily offloaded when the locomotive refuels. The carbon is transported to end-users like concrete, fuel, and chemical producers, for purchase. Remora, a carbon capture pioneer, is leading the work with us, and others like Union Pacific, and [Anacostia Rail Holding’s] Pacific Harbor Line [in California]. Revenue from carbon sales is shared with the group.” Also partnering with Remora: Genesee & Wyoming Inc.’s Buffalo & Pittsburg Railroad and Indiana & Ohio Railway.
“Transportation is the largest contributor to emissions,” NS noted in its online article. “Shipping by rail versus truck can reduce emissions on average by 75%, a win for air quality. The new technology [from Remora] is built to capture 70% of carbon dioxide and reduce other air pollutants by 90% without affecting the train’s power.”
When will the rail pilot begin? The first tender car could hit the tracks by late summer, according to NS, “with full production beginning a year later.”
The project “will help us achieve our sustainability targets, including a 42% reduction in scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2034,” NS reported. “By 2030, Remora plans to produce 500 units annually. That’s enough to reduce 714,000 metric tons of CO2 each year—the equivalent to 96,000 homes’ worth of emissions.”
Background
“Mobile carbon capture for transportation has been elusive for decades, said Daniel Sperling, an engineering professor and the founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis,” according to an April 28 Wall Street Journal article on Remora’s technology. “‘It hasn’t been commercialized because it is expensive and there are no policies to support its adoption,’ he said.”
Remora has raised $117 million in venture capital for its carbon capture system that is slated to tackle 375 million tons of CO2 emitted annually by trucks and trains combined.
According to the newspaper, CEO and Co-Founder Paul Gross “said the company expects the system to generate a positive return, factoring in the costs to manufacture and operate. He said there will be carbon-dioxide buyers from industries including agriculture and food and beverage. He declined to disclose additional economic details.”
Remora started testing with the trucking industry. According to the The Wall Street Journal, it “had to redesign its system after the first version became waterlogged and added backpressure to the engine in a pilot test on an 18-wheel Ryder System truck in 2023.”
The “truck-scale system has now achieved up to 90% CO2 capture efficiency—third-party verified—thanks to our proprietary adsorbents,” the company reported in an April 28 LinkedIn post. The company said its next step is “to tackle emissions from rail.”
Gross told The Wall Street Journal that Remora recently purchased a 4,400-hp GE locomotive, manufactured in 1994, for the rail pilot.
“Generally, carbon capture on board a vehicle is complicated because CO2 is heavy and requires additional energy to transport it,” noted The Wall Street Journal. But “[t]rains are more suited for the additional weight than trucks, said Josh Raglin, chief sustainability officer at Norfolk Southern,” in an interview with the paper. Raglin “declined to disclose the financial arrangement with Remora, saying only, ‘it easily pencils out for us.’”
Remora has “signed technology evaluation agreements with railroad companies including Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern and Pacific Harbor Lines [sic], as well as trucking operators DHL, Ryder and others,” according to the paper.
The company website includes these “partners and investors”: UP, NS, Pacific Harbor Line, Genesee & Wyoming’s Buffalo & Pittsburgh and Indiana & Ohio, Ryder, Werner Enterprises, Estes, Purolator, Shopify, Forward, Covenant, Valor Equity Partners, Lowercarbon Capital, USV, First Round, Combinator, Neo, Voyager, and MCJ.
