In the ongoing battle against climate change, carbon capture technology has often been touted as a crucial tool—yet it’s faced significant challenges that have limited its widespread adoption. Enter Mantel, an MIT spin-off company that claims to have developed a breakthrough approach to carbon capture that could change the game entirely.
The Breakthrough Technology
Mantel has developed a novel carbon capture method using molten lithium-sodium ortho-borate salts, a departure from traditional solid materials that have plagued the industry with durability issues. Founded by MIT alumni Cameron Halliday, Sean Robertson, and Danielle Rapson, the company’s approach represents a fundamental shift in how we might tackle one of the most challenging aspects of industrial emissions.
As Halliday explains, “This is a pragmatic solution that’s not trying to reshape the world as we dream of it. It’s looking at the problem at hand today and fixing it.” His journey to this solution involved years of research at MIT, where he repeatedly encountered the same frustrating graph—the downward trend showing how materials lose their ability to capture CO2 over time at high temperatures.
Achieving Remarkable Efficiency
The company’s system achieves an impressive 95% efficiency in capturing CO2 emissions from industrial sources, a figure that dwarfs many existing technologies. This high performance isn’t just about the capture rate itself—it’s about the longevity of the system. Unlike previous approaches where materials degraded rapidly under industrial conditions, Mantel’s molten salts showed virtually no degradation even after thousands of cycles in testing.
This stability comes from a key insight: instead of using brittle solid materials that crack under thermal stress, Mantel employs salts that behave like liquids at high temperatures. This eliminates the mechanical failures that have historically doomed other carbon capture efforts.
Economic Viability Through Steam Generation
Perhaps the most innovative aspect of Mantel’s technology lies in its approach to energy consumption. Traditional carbon capture systems are notorious energy hogs, often consuming vast amounts of power with nothing to show for it but reduced emissions. Mantel turns this equation on its head by using the heat from its process to generate steam—a valuable commodity in countless industrial processes.
“We’re still consuming energy, but we get most of it back as steam,” Halliday notes, contrasting his approach with incumbent technologies that “only consume steam.” This clever design means Mantel’s system requires just 3% of the net energy that state-of-the-art carbon capture systems demand—a dramatic improvement that fundamentally alters the economics of carbon capture.
Rather than treating carbon capture as a costly waste management exercise, Mantel has transformed it into a value creation process for industrial customers. Whether it’s a power station using steam to generate electricity or a refinery with numerous steam-dependent processes, the byproduct revenue can offset the costs of emissions reduction.
Solving Industry’s Persistent Problems
Carbon capture technology has long been hampered by two interrelated challenges: material degradation under high temperatures and excessive energy consumption. These limitations haven’t just been theoretical—they’ve prevented many promising laboratory concepts from becoming commercially viable solutions.
Mantel’s approach tackles both issues head-on. The liquid-like behavior of the molten salts at operating temperatures prevents the cracking that undermines solid capture materials. Meanwhile, the steam generation capability transforms energy consumption from a liability into an asset, potentially making carbon capture economically attractive rather than burdensome.
This represents a paradigm shift in the field. Where previous technologies focused primarily on maximizing capture efficiency, often neglecting the practical difficulties of continuous operation under harsh industrial conditions, Mantel’s approach considers the complete picture—including maintenance, energy balance, and economic sustainability.
Broad Applications and Market Potential
The versatility of Mantel’s solution is another significant advantage. The modular system can be retrofitted to a wide range of emission sources, including power stations and factories producing cement, steel, paper and pulp, and oil and gas. This adaptability means that widespread deployment doesn’t require complete facility redesigns—just bolt-on additions to existing infrastructure.
Halliday emphasizes the pragmatic nature of this approach: “This means they don’t have to shut down their billion-dollar asset and reimagine their business to address an issue that they all appreciate is existential.”
The company’s development path reflects careful consideration of scaling challenges. Starting with shoebox-sized prototypes, the team progressed through shipping container-sized units and is now preparing for full-scale industrial deployment through a partnership with Kruger Inc. at a Quebec facility. Following a two-year test phase, successful results could lead to rollout across Kruger’s network of plants.
Mantel is currently in discussions with nearly 100 industrial partners worldwide, signaling strong market interest in their solution. While the company focuses solely on capture—not conversion or sequestration—they produce high-quality CO2 suitable for various applications, including the food and beverage industry.
The Road Ahead
Mantel’s emergence from MIT’s entrepreneurial ecosystem underscores the institute’s commitment to translating academic research into real-world impact. Halliday’s journey from graduate student repeatedly seeing his graphs slope downward to CEO of a promising startup embodies the iterative process of technological innovation.
His initial research in Professor Alan Hatton’s lab and subsequent development through MIT’s Climate and Energy Ventures course helped bridge the gap between scientific discovery and commercial application. The company’s growth through The Engine, MIT’s startup incubator, provided the resources needed to scale from laboratory curiosity to industrial solution.
As industries worldwide face increasing pressure to reduce emissions while maintaining competitiveness, solutions like Mantel’s may become increasingly valuable. The company’s claim to use only 3% of the net energy that conventional systems require—while simultaneously generating a valuable byproduct—could mark a turning point in carbon capture’s troubled history.
Whether this technology will fulfill its promise remains to be seen in large-scale deployments. But with strong backing from MIT, a clear path toward commercialization, and a solution that meaningfully addresses two of carbon capture’s biggest challenges, Mantel represents genuine hope in the fight against climate change.
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