$4M Grant Funds AirMyne’s 1,000‑Ton/Year DAC Pilot at Stockton

The Stockton Pilot: A 1,000-Ton Field Test

The first U.S. field test of a low-temperature liquid direct air capture system at industrial scale will rise on a former ethanol plant at the Port of Stockton. The California Energy Commission approved a $4 million grant for AirMyne Inc. on October 8, 2025, under agreement CRI-25-001, drawn from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The money buys a phased field test — DeltaDAC — that moves from permitting through commercial-readiness evaluation in five stages, targeting 1,000 metric tons of CO₂ captured per year by March 2030.

Phase 1 runs a sub-10-ton system at AirMyne's Berkeley headquarters while the team secures permits for the Stockton site. Phase 2 installs a 10-to-50-ton system. Phase 3 scales to 100-to-200 tons. Phase 4 hits the 1,000-ton mark. Phase 5 evaluates commercial readiness. The commission's staff report frames the logic plainly: incumbent DAC technologies face high costs and resource demands, while alternatives using novel sorbents or membranes lack proven field durability and supply chains. AirMyne bets that a liquid process using off-the-shelf chemicals and conventional regeneration equipment sidesteps both problems.

The site sits on a former Pacific Ethanol production facility owned by Pelican Renewables LLC, which underwent CEQA review in 2006 and an addendum in 2008. In February 2025, the Stockton Port District's environmental director ruled the DeltaDAC addition a minor modification needing only ministerial approvals. Mitigation measures from the original EIR carry over, supplemented by commission-specific tribal cultural resource protections. The environmental impact determination: not significant.

Energy and cost targets are aggressive. The grant requires a 30-percent reduction in energy intensity, CEC's data shows: from a baseline of 8,000 to 15,000 kWh per metric ton of CO₂ down to 2,000 to 8,500 kWh. Cost per ton must drop more than 30 percent, the commission found, from $5,900–$7,300 to $1,500–$3,400 or lower. The ultimate horizon is $100 per ton by 2032 in a larger commercial facility. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory receives $440,000 as a subcontractor for technical support, according to the California Energy Commission. Custom equipment and chemicals account for roughly $2.4 million of the budget, the California Energy Commission reported; Pelican Renewables gets $250,000 for site access and integration.

Community engagement is a contractual deliverable. The agreement mandates bi-annual workshops with local stakeholders and a Community Benefits Plan due at project close. The commission's staff flagged workforce development: if local staffing is needed, the project should source labor from the community and explore training mechanisms.

AirMyne's founders, Sudip Mukhopadhyay and Mark Cyffka, brought 40-plus years of chemical-industry scale-up experience when they launched the company out of Y Combinator in May 2022 with a $6.9 million seed round. The Stockton pilot is the first time their low-temperature regeneration chemistry (designed to release CO₂ at 100 to 130°C) will face the variable weather, water constraints, and operational grind of an industrial port.

Why Low-Temperature Heat Changes the Game

AirMyne's technical bet rests on a counterintuitive choice: a liquid solvent that releases captured CO₂ at 100–130°C, far below the 300–900°C most direct air capture systems demand. The two-step process pulls ambient air through cooling-tower-style contactors where a proprietary alkaline solution binds CO₂. The loaded solvent then moves to a centralized stripping column where low-pressure steam (just hot enough to boil water) drives off a pure CO₂ stream and regenerates the chemistry for another cycle.

"In the first step, fans pull air into a mechanical structure called a contactor, where it mixes with a proprietary AirMyne capture chemistry. There, the liquid chemistry binds with the CO2 from the air. In the second step, the CO2-rich chemistry is pumped to a stripping column, where low-pressure steam is used to release a high-purity CO2 gas stream that can be passed to utilization or sequestration partners," according to Carbon Herald's description of Cyffka's explanation.

That temperature ceiling changes where a plant can sit. Climeworks and other solid-sorbent operators need 300–900°C heat, locking them into dedicated high-grade energy sources or expensive electric heaters. AirMyne's solvent opens the door to waste heat from chemical refineries, breweries, or geothermal reservoirs: any source that can deliver 100°C steam.

"It's flexible. When you're at that pilot stage and you're trying to make your first pilot, now you can use low-temperature heat from electricity, you can use it from industrial waste heat, you can use it from geothermal," Cyffka told TechCrunch. The same flexibility, he argues, creates a path to gigaton scale: "Geothermal is a really promising pathway for where DAC needs to go."

The trade-off is thermodynamic. High-temperature regeneration cycles can be more efficient per ton because the chemistry favors release at higher heat. AirMyne accepts a potential efficiency penalty in exchange for siting optionality and cheaper energy. The company claims a 100× reduction in energy requirement versus early lab baselines, though it has not published a peer-reviewed energy balance for the integrated system. Current DAC costs across the industry run $250–600 per ton; AirMyne targets that range by sidestepping purpose-built high-grade heat infrastructure.

Liquid solvents also simplify the supply chain. The company says its chemical inputs are "benign, low-cost, and can be procured anywhere in the world," a deliberate contrast to specialized solid sorbents or exotic metal-organic frameworks. Pumps, pipes, and stripping columns are standard chemical-plant equipment, available from multiple vendors. Cyffka's background at BASF informed the design: modular contactors feed a single large regeneration column, the same architecture that scales from pilot to world-scale petrochemical trains.

Water consumption is the conspicuous downside. The contactors evaporate one to seven tons of water per ton of CO₂ captured, a figure Cyffka acknowledged could "preclude its use in dry regions like the American Southwest." The Stockton site, situated in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, sidesteps that constraint for the pilot phase. Three fully granted patents cover the solvent chemistry and process integration, and the team has cycled through roughly 30 prototype configurations in its Berkeley lab, reaching kilogram-per-day capture rates before the commission grant funded the 1,000-ton-per-year field demonstration.

The pilot will test whether the lab-scale energy advantage survives real-world air variability, solvent degradation, and the parasitic loads of moving thousands of tons of liquid daily. If the numbers hold, the low-temperature liquid route gives AirMyne a lever that solid-sorbent competitors lack: the ability to plug into the vast, underutilized pool of industrial waste heat and next-generation geothermal (energy that is cheap, carbon-free, and otherwise stranded).

The Team Building the Pilot

AirMyne's transition from lab-scale prototypes to a 1,000-ton-per-year pilot has triggered a deliberate expansion of its technical workforce. The company, which listed 11 people on its Y Combinator jobs page during the W22 batch, grew to roughly 20 engineers, scientists, and operations staff after its $6.9 million seed round. Five open roles now anchor a hiring push:

The roles map directly to the pilot's phased deployment plan. The Mechatronics/Automation Engineer will "design, build, automate, and operate prototype systems ranging from lab scale up to roughly the size of a shipping container," per the job description: a scope that mirrors the modular collector architecture Cyffka described, where liquid flows from distributed contactors to a centralized regeneration column. The Mechanical Design Engineer and Research Engineer positions support the same hardware iteration loop. The Staff/Senior Scientist role signals continued chemistry optimization; the solvent process operates at 100–130°C regeneration temperatures, a range the company claims reduces energy demand by over 100× compared to earlier iterations, but which still requires solvent stability and water-management improvements.

Commercial leadership is also solidifying. Dr. Jan Huckfeldt, former Chief Commercial Officer at Climeworks, joined as interim CCO in January 2026, a hire that aligns with the shift from technology validation to offtake and deployment conversations. Huckfeldt's background at the solid-sorbent DAC leader brings direct experience selling carbon removal to corporate buyers and navigating verification frameworks, both critical as AirMyne advances toward its San Joaquin County sequestration site injection planned for 2026. The company has already delivered captured CO₂ samples to utilization partners CarbonBuilt (low-carbon concrete) and Rubi Laboratories (textiles), demonstrating the downstream pipeline Huckfeldt will formalize.

The hiring tempo reflects a broader constraint: AirMyne's "building DAC at scale mindset" depends on industrial supply chains and off-the-shelf equipment rather than bespoke components. That philosophy — rooted in Cyffka's BASF experience and Mukhopadhyay's chemical commercialization track record — means the engineering team must fluently translate process chemistry into piping, instrumentation, and control systems that resemble conventional chemical plants. The Lab Technician role supports the high-throughput solvent testing that feeds those design decisions. With ground-breaking on the commercial pilot slated for 2027 and two DOE DAC Hub selections (Fervo's Red Rocks hub in Utah and the CALDAC hub in San Joaquin Valley) already secured, the current headcount of roughly 20 will need to absorb these five hires quickly (and likely more) to keep the Stockton deployment on schedule.

What ENEOS Brings Beyond Capital

When Japan's largest energy company makes its first equity investment in direct air capture, the signal carries weight. ENEOS Holdings, parent of ENEOS Corporation, entered AirMyne's cap table in March 2026 through its venture vehicle ENEOS Innovation Partners Godo Kaisha, a move that marked the Japanese conglomerate's inaugural DAC bet and established a long-term collaboration framework the two companies have been executing since.

The partnership is structured around more than capital. ENEOS and AirMyne have launched a joint technical evaluation and are actively exploring industrial integration and project development opportunities across the United States, Japan, and other global markets. "Direct Air Capture is recognized as a strategically important technology warranting evaluation for industrial decarbonization," said Masashi Shimanuki, General Manager of the CVC Office at ENEOS. "AirMyne's technology platform and engineering approach align well with ENEOS's energy transition strategy. We look forward to advancing this collaboration as part of our broader commitment to carbon-neutral solutions." Mukhopadhyay framed the relationship as operational leverage: "AirMyne is building a world-class DAC technology, and this close collaboration strengthens our ability to accelerate cost reduction and commercial deployment."

That acceleration matters because AirMyne's path to commercial scale runs through industrial partners who understand refinery-scale engineering, not just climate finance. ENEOS brings decades of experience designing, permitting, and operating the kind of capital-intensive assets — regeneration columns, heat-integration networks, water-treatment trains — that AirMyne's liquid-solvent process requires at megaton scale. The collaboration also reflects a broader pattern: Japanese energy and chemical majors are systematically investing in U.S. carbon removal startups as part of their own transition roadmaps. Sumitomo Corporation has backed Global Thermostat; Mitsui & Co. has invested in Heirloom Carbon Technologies. ENEOS's entry into DAC follows the same logic: secure early access to a technology portfolio that could decarbonize their own operations and create new revenue streams in a carbon-constrained world.

For AirMyne, the ENEOS relationship validates a technical approach the company has argued is built for industrial deployment from day one. The low-temperature regeneration that defines AirMyne's solvent chemistry is not merely an energy-efficiency claim; it is a compatibility claim. It means the process can plug into waste-heat streams at chemical plants, refineries, and geothermal facilities: the very infrastructure ENEOS operates and understands. The joint technical evaluation underway is effectively a stress test of that compatibility: can AirMyne's contactor-regenerator architecture meet the reliability, footprint, and cost targets that a major industrial operator would require for a final investment decision?

The answer will shape what comes after the Stockton pilot. AirMyne plans to break ground on a commercial pilot and demonstration plant in 2027. ENEOS's involvement suggests the first commercial-scale deployment may not be a standalone AirMyne project but an integrated installation at an industrial host site, quite possibly in Japan, where ENEOS's refinery and petrochemical footprint offers immediate low-temperature heat sources and CO₂ offtake pathways. The partnership also opens a channel for Japanese policy incentives that could underwrite early revenue.

What distinguishes the ENEOS-AirMyne tie-up is its specificity: a named investment vehicle, a declared first-equity-in-DAC milestone, a joint technical workstream already in motion, and a mutual commitment to explore projects in multiple geographies. If the Stockton pilot delivers on its 1,000-ton-per-year target with the energy profile AirMyne has modeled, ENEOS will have the data it needs to move from evaluation to deployment. That decision — more than any venture round — will determine whether AirMyne becomes a niche technology demonstrator or a supplier of record for industrial carbon removal.

Can AirMyne Win a Seat at the Table?

The direct air capture market is tiny in revenue but massive in ambition. SNS Insider pegged the global DAC market at $160 million in 2025 and projects it to hit $18.2 billion by 2035, a 60.7% compound annual growth rate. North America holds the largest share at 46.7%, driven by the DOE's $3.5 billion DAC Hub programme and the 45Q tax credit, which pays up to $180 per metric ton of permanently stored CO₂. Private capital has followed: over $2.3 billion flowed into DAC companies between 2021 and mid-2025, though deal sizes have been shrinking.

The technology split defines the competitive map. Solid-DAC commanded 55.5% of the market in 2025 because solid sorbents regenerate at lower temperatures, consume less energy per cycle, and survive thousands of adsorption-desorption rounds. Liquid-DAC held the remaining 44.5% but is the fastest-growing segment: developers bet its chemistry scales more easily in heavy industry. AirMyne sits squarely in that liquid camp, but with a twist: its solvent regenerates at 100–130°C, low enough to run on industrial waste heat, geothermal, or resistive electricity. Most liquid systems need 300–900°C heat, tying them to dedicated high-grade energy sources.

The incumbents have already proven scale. Climeworks switched on Mammoth in Iceland in May 2024 (36,000 tonnes per year on solid amine sorbents) and sells credits to Microsoft and Stripe. Carbon Engineering, now owned by Occidental Petroleum, is advancing the Stratos project in Texas under DOE Hub funding. Heirloom validated its limestone-based mineralization process in Louisiana in 2024. 1PointFive's Project Bison in Wyoming targets 5 million tonnes per year of DAC-to-storage, also backed by the Hub programme. Mission Zero opened a 250-tonne-per-year DAC-to-building-materials plant in Norfolk, UK, in 2025. Carbyon claims its modular panels capture roughly 3 tonnes of CO₂ per kilogram of sorbent annually. These companies share a pattern: vertical integration. Climeworks and Carbon Engineering develop and manufacture their own sorbents, locking in performance data that outside suppliers can't match. The DOE Hub programme now requires multiple qualified sorbent vendors per project, but the pricing power stays with the integrated players.

AirMyne's bet is that energy flexibility outweighs the efficiency edge of high-temperature regeneration. Cyffka has argued that low-temperature heat (especially from next-generation geothermal) unlocks sites that solid-DAC projects can't reach. The company's partnership with Fervo Energy in Utah is the proof point: pair AirMyne's contactor with Fervo's advanced geothermal, and you get continuous baseload heat without building a dedicated power plant. The trade-off is water: one to seven tonnes per tonne of CO₂ captured, which rules out arid regions like the American Southwest. Cyffka acknowledges the low-temperature cycle could be less thermodynamically efficient but contends the broader site optionality and cheaper heat more than compensate.

The sorbent market tells a parallel story. Solid sorbents hold an estimated 62% share in 2026. The market remains fragmented — no single supplier dominates — and competition turns on regeneration cycle durability, capture efficiency at 420 ppm ambient CO₂, and manufacturability at scale. AirMyne's solvent uses an inorganic ionic base with promoters and a phase-transfer catalyst, a formulation the company says avoids the degradation pathways of conventional amine liquids. If the Stockton pilot demonstrates stable cycling at 1,000 tonnes per year with the claimed energy profile, AirMyne becomes a credible second source for developers the DOE Hub programme is forcing to diversify.

The Stockton pilot is the first time a low-temperature liquid-DAC system will run at this scale in the U.S. with state, federal, and industrial backing. Its data — capacity factor, solvent make-up rate, water balance, heat integration efficiency — will either validate AirMyne's claim that energy flexibility is the scaling lever, or confirm that solid-DAC's thermodynamic advantage is too large to overcome. The market has room for multiple winners, but the pilot decides whether AirMyne earns a seat at the table.

The Delta Decides

The DeltaDAC project plan calls for the first contactor fans to spin up at the Port of Stockton, pulling Delta air through a chemistry designed to work with the heat a refinery throws away. The 1,000-ton target is modest beside the megaton ambitions of Climeworks or 1PointFive. But the test is not volume: it is proof that a liquid solvent regenerating at boiling-water temperatures can survive the grind of an industrial port: variable humidity, solvent carryover, pump failures, water balances that shift with the seasons. If DeltaDAC hits its energy and cost marks, the low-temperature path becomes a deployable option for every chemical plant, geothermal field, and refinery with waste steam to spare. If it misses, the thermodynamic penalty that theorists have long predicted will have claimed another entrant. The data will speak from Stockton first.

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