Rimora engineers demonstrate carbon-capture technology that mounts on diesel trucks and trains. Their system uses sorbent pellets to scrub exhaust and achieve up to 90% capture efficiency, producing high-purity CO₂. They've built a test rig around a 470-horsepower diesel engine and purchased a locomotive to scale the technology to rail cars.
This is our first generation version of the system, and you can see it's the same architecture as the system we looked at upstairs. Now we have huge cylinders filled with pellets, dirty exhaust flowing in there, and then we get clean exhaust flowing out this blue tailpipe right there. And then it pumps out of the spout and into a big offload tank.
I know what a remora is, so I think I get the name, but I should ask to be sure. So it's this suckerfish.
That has a symbiotic relationship with sharks where it sucks on and cleans them. So we are sucking onto trucks and trains and cleaning them. We learned a lot from this, but we also uncovered some significant challenges with the system. We had to actually load up a trailer, hook it up to the truck, and drive it around. Our next step was an unpackaged version of the system. So this was our solution. We're able to take that system that was on the truck and then spread it out. We put all the different components on carts. This is a 470-horsepower diesel truck engine. You just pluck it out of a semi-truck, you plop it down right here, and then it's attached to a water brake, which allows us to put load on the engine. This system has been able to achieve up to 90% capture efficiency from an actual diesel truck engine producing high-purity CO2.
We saw the early version that was on the truck. Is a new version based off everything you've learned?
Yeah, take this, now shrink it down and package it, put it on a truck. The other next step is to take this, scale it up, and put it on a railcar.
While Rimora will continue on with the truck technology, it appears that its first carbon capture systems will actually go on to the trains, where it has more room to suck.
This is our train. I think we're one of the only startups that bought a locomotive.
