Carbon Collect, one of the long-standing members of the Direct Air Capture (DAC) industry, has announced several technological milestones and announced that the company is raising capital in a pre-seed round ahead of its Series A, which will take place in the next few months.

Pól Ó Móráin, CEO of Carbon Collect, said: “Carbon Collect has listened to the market, worked with world-class experts and now offers a solution that is more efficient, scalable and cost-effective than anything that has come before. We are delighted to present this update to investors to launch our second generation MechanicalTree™. It represents a major milestone not only for Carbon Collect but for the entire Direct Air Capture industry.”

The company’s Gen II technology now makes it possible to capture CO2 at significantly lower costs through improvements in sorbent materials, energy recovery and the regeneration process.

Scalability was also a priority when developing this new iteration, allowing customers of different types and sizes to use the solution, regardless of the size of the clusters they want to develop.

One of the first deployments will be at the Southwest Regional Direct Air Capture Hub (SEDAC), one of the projects strongly supported by the Department of Energy.

Although the company did not disclose the current price for carbon capture (which likely varies depending on the scale of deployment at each site and energy costs), Carbon Collect said it is on track to achieve a DAC price of under $200 per tonne by 2030 with this generation of the technology.

The company will continue to collaborate with Arizona State University, where the technology’s inventor and carbon capture pioneer Professor Klaus Lackner is a lecturer. Gen-II MechanicalTree will be installed by the end of 2024 and will serve as a demonstration ahead of commercial launch next year.

Read more: Carbon Collect raises $12 million for mechanical tree technology