Carbon capture startup Mantel announced that it has raised $30 million in Series A funding round, with proceeds aimed at scale its technology to help address emissions in hard-to-abate industries.

Founded in 2022 by Cameron Halliday, Danielle Rapson and Sean Robertson as a spin out from MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Mantel is developing molten salt-based carbon capture materials, aimed at providing affordable carbon capture and helping industrial companies reach net zero goals. The company’s molten borate materials, designed to operate at high temperatures found inside boilers, kilns, and furnaces, capture CO2 at the source of emissions, while recovering high-grade heat during absorption to offset the energy necessary to regenerate the molten borate material, or desorption, reducing capture costs by more than half compared to conventional technologies, according to Mantel.

The company said that its technology has demonstrated carbon capture at lab scale of half a tonne per day, and that the new capital will be used to implement a demonstration project at an industrial site, advancing its pathway to full-scale commercial deployment of its high-temperature carbon capture systems. The new demonstration project is expected to be approximately 10 times larger than its lab-scale project, rated to capture 1,800 tonnes of CO2 per year.

Mantel co-founder and CEO, Cameron Halliday, said:

“With support from both investors and industry leaders, we are eager to showcase the effectiveness of Mantel’s technology across industrial applications and demonstrate its potential to be the lowest cost pathway to net zero emissions for our industrial customers. This investment enables us to transition from lab-pilot success to working with customers to design and prepare for the deployment of full-scale commercial projects.”

The financing was led by the venture capital arms of energy companies Shell and Eni, Shell Ventures and Eni Next, and included participation from investors Engine Ventures, New Climate Ventures, Hartree, bp Ventures, Arosa Ventures, Vale Ventures, Newlab, MCJ Collective, among others.

Hector MacQuarrie, Principal at Shell Ventures, said:

“We believe carbon capture and storage offers a way to reduce emissions, especially for hard-to-abate sectors. However, for widespread adoption of carbon capture to be feasible, it must be cost effective. Mantel’s innovative solution has the potential to significantly lower carbon capture costs and can be applied across diverse sectors, including natural gas power plants and hard-to-abate industries like cement, steel and chemicals.”

Clara Andreoletti, CEO of Eni Next, added:

“For Eni Next, carbon capture and storage is a key lever for the energy transition. Mantel’s technology offers the potential to significantly decrease the cost of capture thanks to its innovative solvent. Making carbon capture affordable is key to its deployment across hard-to-abate industries.”