Capturing CO2 with Paint - Steve & Beth McDaniel

Dr. Steve McDaniel and Beth McDaniel, JD founded and run Reactive Surfaces, and intellectual property firm that develops and patents paints that do more than turn buildings attractive colors and protect them from the elements: They react to the atmosphere in intentional and desirable ways. They are currently in the running to win the most valuable X-Prize contest ever by creating a paint that captures CO2 from the atmosphere more simply, cheaply and scaleably than any direct air carbon technology before it.

The McDaniels founded Reactive Surfaces in 2001 in response to the events of 911. They wanted to know if they could stabilize an enzyme in a coating to protect surfaces against a chemical weapons attack. This original technology is called WMDtox, and it works to decontaminate organophosphorous nerve gases virtually on contact. From there, they have developed other various functional platform technologies using non-toxic bio-based organisms, such as self-cleaning coatings and coatings that are antimicrobial and antiviral.

Carbon Capture Coatings have the power to significantly reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, thereby lessening the impact of global warming. Carbon Capture Coatings are bio-engineered such that, when exposed to sunlight, they capture and fix atmospheric carbon dioxide. These coatings support living cells capable of carrying out photosynthesis, the process by which Nature captures and fixes atmospheric CO2.

Further Reading:

·      Carbon Capture Coatings: Next Generation Biomimetic Coatings for Carbon Capture & Removal

·      Carbon Capture Coatings: Can Paints and Coatings Save Humanity?

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Episode Transcript

Gregory A. Williams (00:10):
Thanks for joining us for another episode
of climate money watchdog wherewe investigate and report on how
federal dollars are being spenton mitigating climate change and
protecting the environment. Weare a private, nonpartisan,
nonprofit organization that doesnot accept advertisers or
sponsors. So we can only do thiswork with your support. Please

(00:31):
visit us at climate moneywatchdog.org To learn more about
us and consider making adonation. My name is Greg
Williams, and I learned toinvestigate and report on waste,
fraud and abuse in federalspending. While working at the
project on government oversight,or Pogo 30 years ago, I learned
to do independent research aswell as to work with

(00:52):
confidential informants orwhistleblowers to uncover things
like overpriced spare parts,like the infamous $435 hammers,
as well as weapon systems thatdidn't work as advertised. I was
taught by my co host, Dinorazor, who founded Pogo in 1981,
and founded climb money watchdogwith me last year, Dina has

(01:13):
spent 40 years investigating andsometimes recovering millions of
dollars wasted by the DefenseDepartment and other branches of
government and pogo, as anindependent journalist, as an
author, and as a professionalinvestigator. Dina, would you
like to say a few words before Iintroduce our guests?

Dina Rasor (01:31):
Yes, that Greg pretty much told you that I've
been an investigator forever.
And I've done different kinds ofinvestigations, some for
journalism, some for nonprofits.
And when that I started Pogo,which is now still 40, some
years later, still going on theboard of directors, I should
always say that so people know.
And they lots I've also donelawsuits qui tam False Claims

(01:56):
Act lawsuits. And I've alwaysbeen proud of the fact that
returned over $200 million inill gotten gains to the federal
government, but it always alsowhen I should look up because
I'm sure the Pentagon toiletpaper budget is that's just a
few days of the Pentagon toiletpaper, budget, but we keep

(02:17):
going. Okay, and that's prettymuch my introduction, and so
Greg will introduce our guests.

Gregory A. Williams (02:28):
So our guests tonight are Dr. Steve
McDaniel, and attorney BethMcDaniel. Dr. McDaniel is
founder and Chief InnovationOfficer at reactive services,
Founder and Managing Partner inMcDaniel and Associates, a law
firm specializing inintellectual property. And Beth
McDaniel is president ofreactive services, a partner

(02:51):
with McDaniel and Associates, aswell as a partner at COVID
lawsuit experts. Steven Bethfounded reactive services in
2001 in response to the eventsof 911. They wanted to know if
they could stabilize an enzymeand a coating to protect
surfaces against a chemicalweapon attack. This original

(03:11):
technology is called the W Ndetox and works to decontaminate
organophosphorus nerve gases,virtually uncontacted. From
there, they've developed othervarious functional platform
technologies using non toxic biobased organisms, such as self
cleaning coatings and coatingsthat are anti microbial and

(03:32):
antivirus. That's an STI believecarbon capture coatings have the
power to significantly reducecarbon dioxide in the
atmosphere, thereby lesseningthe impact of global warming.
Carbon Capture coatings are bioengineered such that when
exposed to sunlight, theycapture and fix atmospheric
carbon dioxide. These coatingssupport living cells capable of

(03:54):
carrying out photosynthesis, theprocess by which nature captures
and fixes atmospheric co2.
Deena, would you like to say afew words about why we're
excited to?

Dina Rasor (04:06):
Yeah, I guess I'm very, very excited for anybody
who's listened to our podcastsor will know that we did at
least two podcasts on carboncapture and sequestration, the
traditional, let's put somethingon the smokestack second up, get
a small percentage of carbon outof it, the press, compress it,

(04:28):
put it in a pipeline, and we'repipelines have to be built
everywhere, which is, you know,not a popular thing to do these
days. And then you have to findsome cave or some underground
thing to sequester it. Hopefullyforever and hopefully it doesn't
escape and it is very expensive.
It is you know, or you can alsojust direct air suck it out of

(04:49):
the air. But as I always thoughtthat seemed that the percentages
that they have of how muchcarbon they actually capture
they I've already been inflatingthat I was thought that was like
emptying the ocean with ateaspoon. And so we've been
we've looked at that, andbelieve it or not half the
money, that in the in theinfrastructure, you know, not

(05:14):
the infrastructure act.

Gregory A. Williams (05:19):
Go is going better?

Dina Rasor (05:22):
Well, yeah. Half of that money is actually going to
fossil fuel companies to try tokeep beating this dead horse on
carbon capture. So I'm, youknow, we're here to say, if

(05:43):
you're going to spend the money,we got to make sure it works.
Get the politics out of it. Youknow, it doesn't matter who you
know. And so we're reallydelighted that we have the
McDaniels both here to tell usthat there is actually somebody
trying to do more, morecreative, more effective carbon
capture that, especially whenyou don't have to build

(06:05):
pipelines and find caves, whichI find, you know, ludicrous. And
maybe you have an opinion onthat, too. But that's why I'm
glad and I jumped on thisbecause I thought, well, here
are some, here's some scientistsand lawyers are both sides, both
sides, your one scientist, andtwo lawyers. Sit down and

(06:26):
actually look at this and say,there's got, there's a better
way using the knowledge you hadalready. So welcome. And thank
you so much for coming. So tostart, Greg gave an
introduction. But let's dive alittle deeper about your
company, reactive services andthe main products in general so
we can get an idea of where youguys came from.

Beth McDaniel (06:49):
Sure, thanks for having us. We really appreciate
it, Greg, and Deena, we're happyto be here. And well, we're our
company is called reactivesurfaces. For the last couple
decades, what we've been doingis reaching into nature, and
looking for functionality thatnature provides. And then
putting that into paint andcoating system. Now just for

(07:12):
referential here as saying paintand coatings a lot. coatings are
a paint without color. Andthat's pretty much it. A coating
is something that is that isused, usually to either decorate
a surface with color or or toprotect a surface. And it's used
in almost every everythingthat's that has been
manufactured. At some point, itsmanufacturing process, there's

(07:36):
going to be a coding system atsome point, what we add to that
is functionality. And so that isthat we want our surfaces to
react to something to to befunctional in some way. So for
instance, one one suchfunctionality that we've got is,

(07:56):
is a self cleaning,functionality, anti fingerprint,
for instance. And what we do isin nature, there's there are
enzymes that naturally breakdown greases, fats and oils on
contact, we know about that.
That's not our science. But whatour science is, is we take that,
and we know how to put that intoa coding system and allow it to
do what it wants to do innature. But in the coding

(08:20):
system, then surfaces, like youyou know about paint, everyone
knows about paint surfaces, ourcanvas for functionality, we
can, we can read as much paintas we want, and get as much
functionality as we want onsurfaces. And so that's where we

(08:40):
come in at the intersection ofbiotechnology and material
science. And so if we took, forinstance, that lipase and put it
into a coding system, and we'vedone it many times into many
different coating systems formany different applications in
many different industries, thenit would for instance, if it was

(09:01):
painted on your countertops,then you would have self
cleaning countertops. If it wason your eyeglasses, then your
fingerprints are not going toshow up on your eyeglasses
anymore. The enzyme as long asit's as long as the paint or the
coating system is working. Thatenzyme is going to be working to
break down that grease thatnatural versus fats and oils on

(09:25):
contact. There's lots of otherapplications for instance, like
we were contacted once aboutusing it we call this technology
decrease and we were contactedonce about using degrees in a
sewer pipe to get rid of thosefat berms that you hear about
that float in the ocean that areso gross. And so there's you

(09:48):
don't We don't even know thereason why we call these
platform technologies is becausethey can be used by a variety of
industries. in a variety ofapplications, so that is one and
an example of a platformtechnology. Another platform
technology that we have is, is,is an antimicrobial technology.

(10:10):
And you might say, Well, I'veheard of anti microbial paints
and coatings, and you have, andthere are there are out there,
but I'm one distinction with ourtechnology, or platform
technologies is that they'renaturally they're made with
naturally occurring additives.
And, and they're bio based, andthey're non toxic. So what you

(10:33):
have with, with other antimicrobial coatings that you
might have heard of, are usuallyheavy metals, or other
ingredients that might be in notenvironmentally benign or not
too great for people either. Soand a lot of them are being
regulated out. We took when,when the pandemic hit, when the

(10:59):
pandemic hit, we decided to testthat same. That's using a
peptide peptide technology. Andwe decided to use that peptide
technology to see if we were ifit was effective against
viruses, enveloped by viruses,which are the kind that COVID-19
is an enveloped virus. And wewere very successful at that
too. So the technology can be itcan be modified by for instance,

(11:25):
we own a 53 million peptide lablibrary of peptides that we can
pick and choose from this is avery tailored approach to
dealing with a problem is we cangrab a certain peptide, and in
combination with other peptidesor in combination with other
enzymes, and get them to do thework that we're trying to do.

Gregory A. Williams (11:49):
So I'll say maybe help our listeners
understand better by giving abrief description of what a
peptide is. And then I'll admitthat chemistry was my worst
subject in high school and admitthat I'm going to need an
explanation as well.

Beth McDaniel (12:05):
I'm going to defer to my biochemist, husband
and Chief Innovation Officer forthem.

Steve McDaniel (12:10):
They always let the geek come out of the
laboratory of once in a while.
So here I am at the lab, livingsystems, you all US plants,
bacteria, etc. All basicallywe're by having a blueprint. And
that blueprint is in the form ofnucleic acids, DNA particular
and RNA. Those nucleic acidshave the work through ribosomes

(12:33):
are building proteins. They alsobuild peptides and the building
blocks are simply amino acids. Apeptide is a short chain of
amino acids, usually no morethan about 50 or 60. A enzyme
sometimes are you know, massivemini subunits they can they can

(12:55):
have 1000s upon 1000s of aminoacids, like beads on a string.
Okay. So in generally is a sizething. Okay, a peptide, protein.
I hope that answered yourquestion.

Gregory A. Williams (13:11):
Yeah, it certainly improved my
understanding. Thanks. Okay, so

Dina Rasor (13:16):
how? Yeah, so have you use mother nature as a model
for carbon capture coatings?

Beth McDaniel (13:22):
So again,

Dina Rasor (13:23):
how did you get into this?

Beth McDaniel (13:24):
Right, so again, what we did is we pulled from
nature, what we do at reactivesurfaces, is we try to address,
you know, systemic problems, bigproblems with paint, we have
solutions to some of thoseproblems that we can find it
paint like anti COVID paint,like the one that you described
when Greg, you introduced us andand that's a, an enzymatic

(13:49):
additive that it wouldn't in ain a coating system will break
down and detoxifyorganophosphorus nerve weapons.
And in this case, well, we werewe were really blinded by the
urgency of the situation in2018, when the UN issued their,

(14:10):
their, the IPCC, theInternational Panel on Climate
Change report in 2018. That wasthe one that was very dire. And
it really just struck us I mean,for we're married, and I can
tell you that this one just wason the couch for about a week.
He was just like, I can'tbelieve the, this this situation

(14:33):
that we're in, and we he, wethought about it and thought
about it and there was atechnology that he had been
considering for a while. Thatwas based on how lichens react
in the environment. And he saidwithin a week we had gone to our
team, we had a team meeting. Andwe decided that we were going to

(14:59):
pursue This technology becausewe thought that we could use
paint to pull down carbondioxide in the same way that
like and do in nature. Andthat's what we've done. Okay, so
there's a lot more we can say,

Dina Rasor (15:14):
sorry. Okay, what?
Yeah, well, that's okay. Like Iwas about right saying it was a
layman's explanation of thetechnology on using like
imitating nature on the co2. Solike, we like getting in the
weeds here, but not so much ofgetting super high tech. And
things but we like to get in theweeds and where we feel that you
know, you the the listener canthen begin to understand it. And

(15:37):
so far, you guys have done agood job of explaining it. So
can you give us an idea of likean imitation nature? Nature? I
think that's an interestingconcept.

Steve McDaniel (15:50):
I'm sorry. Yes, absolutely. It's a good
question. Let me say something,though, about what Beth had to
say. I was catatonic. You spentyour whole life as a father and
a mother, it's doing nothing buttrying to figure out how to keep
your children safe and, and forthem to thrive. Okay. So when we

(16:11):
started the moonshot project,which is what we called it, I
told my team, I don't want us tomerely survive. I don't want my
children to survive and surviveonly. I want them to thrive. And
they're thriving on Earth. Solet us look at Earth, let us
look at nature and figure outhow it is humans thrive. And

(16:35):
it's pretty simple. Actually,guys, if you if you look at it,
if you ask course the best DACsystem, Director capture system
in the world, the best system isthe carbon cycle, the natural
carbon cycle, the Earth producestons and tons and tons. I say
Earth, like organisms producetons and tons and tons of carbon

(16:56):
dioxide every day. But thosesame systems also pull it down.
And basically, it's bounced witha slight slight amount more
going into sequesteration thatis being emitted by natural
systems. So what are the naturalsystems doing? That's what we

(17:16):
wanted? I said, what are whathow is it working? How is it
working? Well, it was reallypretty simple math. What what
what what nature does is ittakes a rate of capture the rate
of photosynthesis, how, how fastis it gonna go, that they can
capture the co2, spreading thatcapability out on very, very,

(17:37):
very wide surface areas, theentire surface of the ocean down
to about 200 meters, that'scalled the photic zone.
cryptogamic soils all over theearth, every every particle of
sand has these things on it.
Okay, these are microscopicorganisms, and they are
photosynthesizing every second.
All right. So that's how it doescaptured, right of capture times

(18:00):
the surface area. That's what wehad to do. One problem with that
is that photosynthesis have anhas a natural speed limit. And
now I'm going to have to geekout on your just a little teeny
tiny bit, sorry, the speed limitis measured in you know how much
co2 And we can talk about thatin terms of milli moles, 1000s

(18:23):
of moles and moles. I'll tellyou about that in a second.
Well, moles, ARB is a way toquantitate the number of
molecules or the mass ofsomething in your hand, okay.
And times the hours you allowthe photosynthesis to take place
over a meter squared. That's howevery scientist in the world
will report to you. The rate ofphotosynthesis on a leaf are on

(18:48):
the ocean surface or anything.
So we have to have that rate.
And it's its natural speed limitis about 18 millimoles per hour
per meter squared. Some of thebest plant systems that we have
in the labs are called rabiddogs, or rabid dogs, this is a
mustard and they measuredthey've maximized everything

(19:08):
they could possibly do, and theycan't get it above about 80. And
there are a lot of people,they're very interested in
getting photosynthesis to workbetter. It's never happened.
Okay, not one bit better.
Alright. So that's the speedlimit. All right. Well, yeah,
the speed limit, we got to worryabout. Do we have a problem with
surface? Well, the Earth is, isgot a lot of surface area on the

(19:30):
ocean and on the land, okay. Butit's already doing a great job
with those surfaces. We don'twant to mess that up. We want
that to go as fast as itpossibly can. You know, let's
not, let's not do anything toprevent the ocean or the
cryptographic soils from doingwhat they're doing because
they're doing a good job. But westill need a lot of surface

(19:51):
area, tons and tons of surfacearea. Where are we going to get
that? Well, that's when we havethat idea about the pain There's
really something very uniqueabout paint. If you look at the
wall behind you, you can seethat you have essentially an
anti gravity machine back there.
It's a thin, thin layer ofpaint. It weighs stuff it

(20:13):
weighs, and it piles on top ofit. And but it can basically go
to the sky's limit, thatvertical surface could be
painted as high as you want topaint it. And that's because the
paint adheres to the surfaces.
Well, we thought, well, well,that's where we got to go. We've
got to go to vertical surfaces,not horizontal surfaces, not
tongs, not forests, not boatsout of the rivers, we've got to

(20:34):
go to vertical surfaces. Andthat's why we came up with the
carbon capture coatings. Butyou're there's one more element
to that. And that is applied onmassively iterated vertical
surfaces. CCC, it might be yes.
So even though we have a speedlimit, all we have to do right

(20:56):
now all we have to do is make awhole bunch more surface area.
Now you asked if I mightcontinue. You asked, Where in
nature? Did you see thisworking? Have you seen this
working somewhere? There's apain out in nature? Well, if
you've ever gone hiking, you'dprobably say yeah, there is I
see rocks all the time, they'reorange, and pink and gray and

(21:18):
black and white. And thosethings very tightly attached to
the surfaces of rocks, forinstance, are called WeiChen.
They look all the world, likesomeone splashed a bunch of
paint on the rock. And they goas high as they need to go, you
can you can be on the highestmountain tops, and you're gonna
find like and growing there. Sothe the vertical verticality

(21:44):
issue seems to be have also beensolved by nature. So we began
looking at how Lycon wereactually physically configured.
We tried to then mimic exactlywith our, our polymer systems,
our the way we formulate themand everything so that it looks

(22:04):
and acts very, very much like alie can say that real fast. So
we'll talk like a lie. Anyway,like I like it as as if it were
a like, yes, please go ahead.

Gregory A. Williams (22:17):
So I'm going to, again, try to conjure
up some of my high schoolscience teaching. And what I
recall about lichens is not onlycan they adhere to just about
any configuration of surface,but they they don't, they don't
require soil or water. And so Iremember being taught about the
progression of, you know,lichen, which eventually breaks

(22:37):
down and provides just enoughnutrients for a moss to grow.
And that eventually breaks downinto soil. And that's how you
eventually get moresophisticated plant life. And so
you're you're taking in the waynature already treats these
otherwise very barren surfaces,and put it on the first rung of

(22:57):
the ladder and, you know, movinginto a more living
configuration.

Steve McDaniel (23:04):
Yeah, that's, that's right. And, and the other
way to think about this isanother capability of lichens.
In other words, they canbasically make their own niche,
okay, they can go up rocks, theycan go up trees, they can get on
whales noses, I mean, they canget everywhere, all right. But
they have one thing in common. Alichen is to organisms, at

(23:24):
least. And so there's a funguslike you were talking about
that, that basically allows itwithout any soil or anything
just to thrive. But inside thatfungus are nestled and almost
like milk cows, if you will, apasture of animal cells. Usually
these are blue green algae, wecall them algae, they're really

(23:47):
bacteria. And they'rephotosynthetic. And they produce
everything nutrient that thatfungus needs. Even the algae,
I'm sorry, the algae produceeverything that that fungus
needs and that they also need.
All right. So it seemssymbiotic. Sir,

Dina Rasor (24:02):
it's symbiotic, you know, in the sense that they
need they they need each otherto survive.

Steve McDaniel (24:09):
Well, to be exact, it's not quite a
symbiotic relationship. If weare symbiotic with cows, then
then I suppose then the algaeand and the symbiotic
relationship, but they milk thefungus milks the product from
the cells and occasionally willintrude them and kill them. So

(24:30):
yeah, synbiotics not quiteright, but it sure looks like
it. Okay,

Dina Rasor (24:37):
all right. Well on your literature on the lichen
project, which we're gonna getinto that whole project in
little in a little bit. Once weget past the technology part,
claims that your technology hasa carbon removal efficiency of
50% at a cost of $629 per tonneof co2 sequestered And by the

(25:00):
way, that is really an importantpart because the costs of
traditional carbon capture andsequestration is just huge. You
also claim the technology isalready economically competitive
with existing direct air carboncapture and storage, and further
improvements will make any moreeconomically competitive. Give

(25:22):
us some examples of the co2technologies that you can
compete with in this carboncapture.

Beth McDaniel (25:28):
Field. Yeah, I will. And I want to mention that
the 629 that you mentioned is iswe have to keep in mind that
that's a certain scenario thatwas that that was analyzed by
our lifecycle analysis team, ortheir, you know, third party

(25:49):
independent company that comesin to does these analysis is
based on a certain set of factsis all I'm saying. So keep that
in the back of your mind, thosefacts can change. And then there
could be another analysis that'sdone for that set of facts,
which was done for our team likean X PRIZE that we'll talk about
later. X PRIZE team then thatthat was a set of facts that

(26:09):
went into that number. OtherCCS? Excuse me, other carbon
capture and storage techtechnologies that you hear
about, are well, the mostnotable and the one that
everyone wants to say is yeah,why don't we just plant a bunch
of trees, and trees are great,and we shouldn't cut them down.
And but in order, in order toreally address this problem, we

(26:35):
have to address it at gigatonscale, which is a billion
tonnes, meaning we have tocapture in the billions of
tonnes in order to make adifference. Trees in order to
get to a gigaton scale, forinstance, would take in order to
plant there's a there is amovement for planting a trillion

(26:57):
trees, a trillion trees wouldtake up the entire domestic
United States, okay, so it's notscalable. on that level, there's
too much displacement, there'stoo much valuable farmland, it
would it just, it couldn't workat that level, probably alone.
Now, of course, this is a giantproblem that, you know, we're
going to, we're hoping that awhole bunch of technologies will

(27:19):
come into this space into thecarbon removal space to do the
work, there's plenty of room foreveryone in this space. That's
how enormous the problem is.
Other technologies that you hearabout are like bioenergy with
carbon capture and storage. Andthat's where trees are grown, so
that they can or other or otherplants or grow so that they can

(27:39):
be cut down, burned for fuel andcapture the co2 and then inject
that down into the ground. Ithas the same issues of scaling
as planting a trillion trees,you got to grow up those trees
in order to to, to burn them forfuel, and then you also have to,
or you're going to end updeforesting already existing

(27:59):
areas. There's a number of othertechnologies like enhanced
mineral weathering, where you'relike spreading rocks,
everywhere, like clenching uprocks and spreading them out.
And that's a chemical, I don'tknow very much about that
technology. So I won't even talkabout it. But it is another one
that's a soil based technology.

(28:23):
And then when it comes to directair capture are the ones that a
lot of people are familiar withthere. That's like, usually, you
see these big, like kind of airhandler plans. And that's a
solvent or solvent technology inthe case of climeworks, which I
think is a leader in this space.
That's a sorbent technology,that as co2 comes in, it's

(28:46):
captured. And then it's heatedup in, I think, mixed with a
solvent and then put undergroundinjected deep underground, like
a mile and a half or two milesunderground. When people talk
about death, they usually it's aforegone conclusion that we're
going to inject all this co2down into the earth. It's never

(29:08):
been done, though, before onthis kind of scale. There are
issues that we think that, youknow, in order to inject deep
into the ground, you're going topass up water tables. And, you
know, like you've mentioned inyour introduction, Deena, I

(29:29):
mean, there's going to be lotsof pipelines that have to exist
in order to to shove this all ofthe co2 billions of tons
underground. We could go onabout it. I've read one. One
report that it would requireanother 65,000 miles of pipeline

(29:51):
to exist by 2050, which is 12times the amount The pipeline
that we have today. So, I mean,do we even have the resources to
do something and pipe

Dina Rasor (30:08):
and pipelines are so popular, you're right, that to
get the public to buy intosomething like that, when
they're already fighting oilpipelines, because of the spills
and whatever, you know, I justdon't see how that even even if
it worked, which I'm notconvinced it is, I think it's
some sort of politicalimpossibility in the United

(30:28):
States to build that muchpipeline.

Gregory A. Williams (30:32):
Okay, I think you're, you're holding
back on the punch line, though.
So let's, let's, let's get tothe the form in which you
capture and store the carbon,which I think is

Beth McDaniel (30:43):
so Exactly, okay.
So, um, our capture, I mean, ourstorage, or our end of life, for
the co2 is depends on what wewant it to be. You can join in
Steve, if you want. But if wewant the end used to be
something like cellulose, whichis in itself a durable form of
sequestration, then we actuallyhave engineered algae in order

(31:07):
to over produce cellulose. Wecan take hours and put it
underground to Okay, that's notwe're not limited, we just don't
need to and we have no real wedon't really want to but it
could be shoved injected downunder the ground, but we can
also sequester it in a form ofcellulose. Now, cellulose can be
used in a variety of differentit's a very valuable but

(31:30):
byproduct, this is a like aclear bacterial cellulose you
could practically see through itcan be used in anything from,
from the medical industry toclothing to, to building
materials, and even makeup. Andso in some of those have more or
less durable sequestration thanothers, but and then the other

(31:53):
another possibility and thereare many, but another
possibility would be that wewould biochar, the resulting
algal biomass that results fromthe co2 I mean the carbon
capture coatings growing up onthe surfaces, they're going to
produce algal biomass, and wecan harvest that, and biochar

(32:14):
which is a recognized form ofcarbon sequestration of durable
sequestration for hundreds ofyears and results in also a
valuable byproduct, which isbiochar is a soil amendment,
which helps soils capture,retain more water and can make
them even soils even a bettercarbon sink. So we try to make

(32:38):
this a very circular, cyclicalprocess, we recycle everything,
everything is natural, I mean,the ingredients we use in our
paint you can eat and youprobably have without knowing it
before. And so we want this tobe in at the very basic level of
very environmentally friendlything.

Dina Rasor (33:05):
Solution. Okay, so I'm magic I think we've the
audience probably by now soyeah, I'm starting with seeing
and like it, but what are you myunderstanding is you're going to
take PCB PCB P and fight pipingand coated in the inside explain

(33:27):
what the factory would looklike, you know, the like, the
actual plant that's going to dothis, what and the actual where
the like, and where they likeand type bacteria that's going
to grow.

Gregory A. Williams (33:39):
So before we get into that, I wanted to
ask a high level question. Ithink if I understand the the
paper that Dee and I both readcorrectly, that is meant to be
an exercise in which you try tocreate the most dense and most
effective application of yourtechnology conceivable see that
you can generate that very lowcost per metric ton of carbon

(34:03):
sequestered, but that's but yourapproach is not limited to
application and those kinds ofpurpose built factories, you
could paint essentially anythingwith this.

Steve McDaniel (34:14):
Let me see if I can, if I can answer you, okay.
That's what we do is we buildpaints and coatings, we
formulate them for all sorts ofthings. And, but just like in
the natural systems, thosenatural systems have to be kind
of placed in exactly the rightniche, the right sunlight, the

(34:35):
right moisture, the rightnutrients and everything so that
they will work. Okay, so we'renot talking about painting
carbon capture coatings on thethe top of the Empire State
Building, okay? They're going tobe painted on the surfaces that
we control that we can easilyharvest the biomass from and
easily turn into biochar thatthose are two very important

(34:58):
ingredients. Okay. And soAlthough you're right, the
surfaces are not reallyconstrained, that they have to
be surfaces that we have accessthat we control. Okay. And so to
answer your question, I thinkI'm answering your question,
imagine, I'm sure that you havebeen to dock or freight terminal

(35:19):
or whatever, you've just seenpiles and piles of piles and
piles of sort of milky plasticcontainers that are in cages,
and they just stack them upstacking up stacking them up
stack. And those are calledIntermediate bulk cargoes,
containers, okay. They're,they're precisely one cubic
meter in volume. And they havebeen used for years and years

(35:40):
and years and the practice withtheir waste. And they're readily
available commercially, weintend and we already have, I
wish we could show you thevideos, we have taken sheets
that we have painted, that areall meter square, and stack them
up inside these cargo containersthat we're getting control on,

(36:02):
we can give them the light theyneed, we control the humidity
that's in the box. And that'susually all you got to do. And
then they grow quite well. Andsince you can stack them
vertically quite high, you cango right on up and we call it
atmospheric farming. We just gokeep going up and up and up and

(36:22):
up into the atmosphere. That'swhere our product is. co2 is
there. And that's where we wantto be in as much of it as we can
get, and then have a way toactually get that Matt amassed
biomass out, and biochar Gotcha.
Yeah.

Dina Rasor (36:44):
Okay. And then. So, we get that, that idea. And so
the idea is, when it gets howmany you one point, I remember
reading about how many years youcan go, before you have to act,
this is part of the lowmaintenance part of it is how
many years you can go where youactually, you know, you just
have to get, let it keepgrowing, keep moving, and then

(37:05):
you harvest it, and then you canstart over again. So explain
that process that that doesn'trequire a huge amount of labor
and, and space.

Steve McDaniel (37:17):
Well, first of all, let me let me begin with
again, I have to keep back.
Nobody really pays attention topaint guys. Okay, but, but the
truth of the matter, but thetruth of the matter is, the
paint is the hero here, okay.
And the reason that paint is MBSbest term paint is the hero, we

(37:38):
formulated this paint. So forinstance, it will pull water out
of the atmosphere, you don'thave to water these things. They
stay moist. And we're perfectingthat as we go. They pull what
they need out of the atmosphere,they get the these, these
coatings have a free gasexchange, and but they retain

(37:59):
water. Alright, we've tried tominimize the water vapor going
out, maximize the coming in, wealso try to be sure that there's
plenty of co2 at all times. Sothey're never, there's never a
lack of co2. All right. And inaddition to that, we were we can

(38:20):
grow them for a very long timein our in our labs situations.
We've grown them for, you know,a year or so. And they sound
nice and green and they'resitting there in their little
surface or whatever. They theymay not be producing as much co2
after a point in time. And itmay there may be a diminishing
returns that you'll harvest atthat point. Okay, but to answer

(38:41):
your question data is quitequite long. Now, in the LCA TA,
we actually did a aconservative, moderate and very
optimistic harvest cycle. Thosewere measured in months, up to a
year, and then I think it wastwo years and then another was
five years. It depends theharvest cycle also depends on

(39:02):
the speed that you want to go.
Obviously, if we are harvestingmore quickly and taking that
biomass and putting it intobiochar, then we are actually
pulling down more carbon andsequestering it faster. So that
harvest cycle is dependent insome ways about the speed if
biochar is where you want toget, if on the other hand, like
Beth was saying bacterialcellulose, you may let this that

(39:24):
accumulate for months, I meanyears and years, and then then
go ahead harvested. Yes, yeah.

Beth McDaniel (39:32):
Fixed in the paint until you decide to
harvest it, it's not going todegrade but in readmit, right is
what it would do in nature if itwasn't in paint.

Dina Rasor (39:42):
Okay, okay, that that sounds good. It's one of
the course one of the things ofcarbon capture the traditional
carbon capture is out of energyit takes and how you make that
energy. You know, well, it'd begreat if it was renewable but
you know, may not be there butthen you're taking renew Double
energy from somewhere else. Andif you if you use oil and gas

(40:07):
fossil fuel your you know, it'swhat do they always call this
the net, you know, net zero andall this kind of stuff which
gets by the way, Melissamanipulated a lot. So how are
you? What kind of energy isrequirements involved with your
carbon capture coatings? Isn'tit is it much less than the
traditional

Beth McDaniel (40:27):
way? I'll start by answering this and he'll
probably finish it. It dependson like what I was saying
earlier in, in the podcast. Andthat is what are the are the
boundaries around what you'reanalyzing at this point in that
LCA that you were reading. Thatwas a that was a solar energy,
for the most part, just solarenergy, okay. And so what you

(40:50):
would have is you would havemodules, now, these modules
might be a meter cubed, or theymight be the size of a freight
car or whatever, spread outreceiving solar energy. And
that's pretty much the energysource. Okay, that takes a lot
more land. One benefit to thistechnology is that there's it's

(41:13):
a flexible technology, it can beused, with or without energy. So
if we were to use some sort ofwaste energy, or waste heat to
to make some sort of energy, alow cost low or no cost energy,
then we can shrink thatfootprint of the facility. So
it's a lot smaller, because thenwe can stack it and we using

(41:36):
energy so that we could go bothways, but we would only use
waste energy in that situation.
And that would allow us, forinstance, to also pull down
point source emissions from anindustrial slipstream as well.

Steve McDaniel (41:50):
Let me add to that a little bit. And that is
in the study that you saw. Andlet me let me segue real
quickly. The reason we publishedthis study so fast, and we took
a year to get all the data, butthen we brought in the team from
Colorado State University,Professor Jason Quinn, and had
them take a third partyindependent look at the thing.

(42:11):
And the reason we publish it sofast is for some of the reasons
that you mentioned, Dina is thatthey're all over the place.
People are claiming this peopleare claiming that and and what
needs to happen is this line inthe sand needs to be drawn. And
it needs to say you have to doit cradle to grave, every penny
of cost and every molecule ofcarbon. That's what you have to

(42:33):
do. And that's what this studydoes. And the the industry
requirements, it turns out, ifyou look at the study are quite
low for the reasons of bestnotes. This is primarily solar
irradiance. The little bit ofelectricity that's used is
actually photovoltaic. And weuse a little bit of natural gas
for the biochar and, and alittle bit of diesel. But beyond

(42:56):
that is quite low. All right. Ifyou if you look it up, sorry.

Dina Rasor (43:03):
That's okay. I mean, go ahead. Go ahead.

Steve McDaniel (43:06):
Right, if you look at other systems, and I'm,
by the way, I don't think of ourother technologies as
competitors. I think that'ssilly to look at like, these are
colleagues, we better hope thatwe have a billion tools in the
toolbox. Okay. Our colleagueswhat so when I talk about se
kleinburg. So it's not onlybecause they're there, they're

(43:26):
so out there and people talkabout it all the time.
climeworks has has a, a removalefficiency range from about 9%
efficiency, up to about 97% ofefficiency. And it depends
whether or not they're sittingon that geyser in Iceland or

(43:47):
not. If they have the wasteenergy, that wastes energy in
the form of state heated steam,then now thinking what they do
better than we do. Ourefficiency is around 50%.
problem, though, is in thatwhat's more important back then,
that efficiency is scalability.
There's only so many geysers,okay, if you can't scale it,

(44:11):
then figure out where you aremoderately and scale that. So
that's what we're doing ourefficiencies around 50 data 50%
We think we can get it higher,especially if we use waste
energy. But we can we call itlocation agnostic. You can stack
these intermediate bulk cargothings anywhere on dirt. on

(44:35):
asphalt. Yeah, on top of yourbuilding. Right.

Dina Rasor (44:43):
Okay. So, you're, what you're saying is that you
think that you're chatting,you've got to more friendly
technology and getting thegigaton level carbon removed and
potential fear carbon coatings.
Take advantage of that geometricprogression. So in other words,
you know, how much more is itgoing to how fast you can do it

(45:07):
and how much you can scale it upand how quickly because we all
know time is of the essence.

Steve McDaniel (45:16):
Well I wish the picture was that rosy. Okay. But
here's the truth. And this is atruth that we, after we did the
for the X Prize, we had to doeverything you see in that, in
that paper that we sent to you.
We had to do all of that andmodel a 1 million ton per year
facility. And we did andeverything you see that paper is

(45:42):
what we talked about. That's

Beth McDaniel (45:45):
the cost that came out, right, it was a 629.

Steve McDaniel (45:47):
But when we looked at that star, okay, so
when we looked at that, though,I started thinking about
gigatons. Let me just put this,I have to think about this all
the time. Let's talk about thepast. What is 1000 days ago?
That's about 2.74 years ago. Inother words, you were three

(46:08):
years younger. Okay, what isthat million days ago? That's
20 740 years. Okay. And that'sbefore Jesus was born, Rome was
being founded about that time.
Okay. What is a billion giga, abillion days in the in the past?
That is about 2,739,000 to 726years ago. Back then, the very

(46:34):
first humans were probablyabusing their very first not
homo sapiens, Homo habilis, wasstarting to use tools. So when
we're talking about a billion,y'all, it's, it's mind boggling.
Okay? And you and if you'regoing to say you're going to
tackle this problem, you got tocome up with a gigaton solution.

(46:56):
So remember, our equation, rightof capture, driven primarily by
speed and limitedphotosynthesis, times surface
area. The thing that we canmanipulate here is surface area,
we can do pretty good, like wetold you on land and vertical
surfaces building in life. Butthe most surface on the earth is

(47:19):
the ocean, the marineenvironment. So Dr. Nobles on
our team, who is the curator ofthe University of Texas, algae
collection, said, Steve, you,you're forgetting something.
Yes, you have these modularIBCs. They said also, something
that's modular, you have isthese sheets, these painted
sheets, he said they float. Whydon't you just turn them over

(47:45):
and lay them down horizontallyon top of a marine surface. And
so we have started looking atthat very carefully. We're
pretty excited about it, we canget to gigaton. If we do that we
can get to get done. And infact, we're already negotiating
space in the labs and some oftheir expertise at San Francisco
State University. They are rightthere on San Francisco Bay. And

(48:08):
we will be building float. Wecall them coating float sheets
pretty quickly, and starting totest them on marine surfaces.

Dina Rasor (48:19):
Well, when you do I was I am in the San Francisco
Bay area. So I'd love to comeout and watch it and then we
could do a follow up. Podcast onhow that works. Okay, you talk
about the X Prize, talk aboutthe X Prize and how did he win
this prize? And how does itwork? And who's sponsoring it?
And of course, we're alwaysinterested, where's the money
coming from? Cuz because we are,we are very concerned about the

(48:44):
amount of fossil fuel money inyou know, that. That is the
amount of fossil fuel moneythat's involved. And then the
genuine being genuine that thisreally wants to do this for
carbon capture for theenvironment, permanent versus
carbon capture so we cancontinue to burn foil fossil
fuel?

Steve McDaniel (49:04):
Well, I'll accept the answer that I'm
sorry. I wouldn't go ahead.
Because she has been key in boththe XPrize administration as
well as something else she'sgoing to talk to you about in
that regard. But I want to saysince you're ACEF San
Franciscan, okay. Our our ourocean embodiment will be there
up in Tiburon. Next to the bay.

(49:29):
It's beautiful up there. Nobodyever been up there.

Dina Rasor (49:31):
In Yeah, no, I'm very close. Not too far from
where I live. All right.

Steve McDaniel (49:35):
And then 40 miles, just east of that is our
first pilot scale facility atTracy. Right next to the Tracy
renewable energy facility, wherea friend of mine Frank Schubert
is directing amazing biomassconversion facility up in the
San Joaquin Valley. So please,come on over to Tracy come up to
Tiburon and come on over toTracy.

Dina Rasor (49:57):
Well, let me know that that would be really good.
I'd love to do so. Man on thestreet stuff where we go around,
talk to people and have apodcast be, you know, in that
way, okay, so explain the XPrizeto us and how you guys got
involved and who, who, who backsit and all that.

Beth McDaniel (50:13):
So the XPRIZE, a lot of people don't realize what
the XPrize is the XPrize is, isa big prize purse that and
there's a lot of different xprizes for usually addressing
some big societal problem,something like poverty, or, you
know, food shortages or thingslike that, in this case, this X

(50:35):
Prize in it in it, it promotesinnovation, every XPrize is
about you know, innovating to toget a solution to whatever this
big problem is, in this case, anXPrize was set up for carbon
removal systems and financed byElon Musk. And there's $100
million prize purse for this isthe biggest prize ever given

(51:00):
away. So in order to, to beawarded a a share of that 100
million dollar prize purse, itsfirst prize is 50 million, I
think. And then second is 30 and20. Then you have to pull down,
you have to capture andsequester 1000 tons of co2 over
the course of a year, you haveto model costs for that type of

(51:24):
capture sequestration model.
Technology, you have to modelcosts at the million time level,
and then you have to show thatyou can do it at the gigaton
level, you just have to do aproposal at the gigaton level.
And so we are planning onpulling down the 1000 tonnes by
the end of the well the contestis ends on Earth Day, April 22.

(51:50):
I think 2025. And so by then wewill think we will pull down
1000 times and sequestered it'ssuccessfully eligible for the
prize. Okay,

Dina Rasor (52:09):
so that sounds good.

Gregory A. Williams (52:10):
Maybe this may be a good time to ask the
question. You know, I thinkoftentimes X PRIZE contestants
are groups of scientist orparties other than functioning
commercial enterprises. And if Iunderstand correctly, you are in
the business and have been inthe business of making these

(52:31):
kinds of payments for quite sometime. So while this particular
application may be experimental,you have lots of operational
commercially successfulexperience making these kinds of
coatings. That's correct.

Steve McDaniel (52:50):
Yeah. Okay. In fact, we're, you know, sometimes
we're looking at a little scansand going, you're a paint
company, you're gone for the XPrize for carbon removal. Please
explain. Okay,

Beth McDaniel (53:03):
we're right in our lane we're writing. And we
look for functionality in natureand pull it out in nature and
harness it and put it into acoding system. And that's what
we've done here.

Steve McDaniel (53:15):
Okay, and add one thing about the X Prize has
a incredibly aggressiveschedule. Okay, we, we by 20,
the by around the first, firstof 2025. In other words, in
about a year and a half or so,you have to have already pulled
down that 1000 times. So you canshow it to the judges, and then
they can award you sometime inApril, on the basis of that what

(53:38):
you prove to them. Okay, so it'svery aggressive.

Dina Rasor (53:43):
Wow, that sounds interesting. Okay. Well, I also
see that you have both lawyersand you and you have a law firm.
And how's that involved in yourcarbon capture? coating? Yeah,
at the heart of

Beth McDaniel (53:59):
what out of everything we do at reactive
surfaces, there's an IP lawfirm. And so we are we
vigorously and rigorouslyprotect our IP, and we know how
to do it. Trade secrets andsuch. And so we have, well, your
audience can't see it, but awall of patents. That is right

(54:20):
behind us. And that's so that'sjust part of what we do on a
daily basis. We're always we'reprotecting it from day one.

Steve McDaniel (54:32):
Okay, good. You want to hear something weird?
Yeah. Yes, we always protect ourIP, both the IP from a patent
standpoint, from a commercialadvantage standpoint, from trade
secret standpoint, but in thisparticular case, it's a little
odd. We're less worried aboutit. Because what we want is to

(54:54):
achieve the goal and it willoperate. If we can give people
everything I want to go forinstance, to the people that
were that want to push thingsdown a hole and just say, Get
just just give us the co2.
Sequester. Don't Don't put itdown a hole, give us your co2, I
will show you how to do it.

(55:16):
Okay, so yes, we do rigorouslyprotect our intellectual
property. But in this case, weare quite willing to share.

Dina Rasor (55:26):
Good. Okay, great. I think that the other thing that
I was looking at, because thisis of course, my, my ignorance
of this is, you say, at the endlife of the cutting, you can
biochar at the coating forstable carbon sequestration. And
we talked about putting it insoil. And I understand that it's

(55:48):
not really as bad as makingcharcoal. But so could you
explain the biochar coating and,you know, anything that burns
anything? Sounds like it burns.
So a lot of the environmentalsay no more burning. So how is
this? How is this not puttingcarbon back in?

Steve McDaniel (56:08):
Right, actually, not an art technology, but
you'll hear people talking aboutthe trillion tree initiative.
And some sort of cheeky peoplesaid, well say, Well, why don't
you just not cut down a trilliontrees and burn them? That'd be a
lot more advantageous, okay. Andthere's some logic to that.

(56:28):
Okay. Bio charring is a verywell known durable sequestration
technique. It's been a it's beenperfected or a great period of
time. The one cool thing aboutbiochar is there's a lot of fuel
in biomass, especially in thingslike diatoms, they have oil,

(56:48):
literally droplets of oils.
That's how they monitor how farup and down in the water column
they are, how much oil they havein their center. But anyway, the
point is, biochar has been soperfected is that we can pull
the energy from the biomassitself. And we can create
something called sin gas. And wecan create something called
biochar oil. Okay, utilizingthose fuels, putting those back

(57:11):
into the system, it is basicallyself energizing. All right, they
recently are recycling the wasteproduct. That's correct. And
once it gets into the biocharstate is it's it's a lot more
carbon than charcoal. I mean,it's about 90% Carbon. Okay,
there's some other things inthere but not much. It's mainly

(57:33):
carbon. All right. So that's,that's how it works. Especially
okay.

Dina Rasor (57:41):
Okay, is this possible? I'm sorry, go ahead. I
was gonna.

Gregory A. Williams (57:47):
So I think that addresses where the energy
comes from, but but typicallyburning an oil does release
carbon into the, into theatmosphere. So how does that
chemical process work and inthis case, and explain the
difference between combustionand I hope my pronouncing this
right, pyrolysis?

Steve McDaniel (58:09):
Yeah. Pyrolysis is something that is done
virtually without oxygen. So itis burning, in a sense, okay.
But it's primarily nitrogen. Andthere's only a little bit of
oxygen in there to basicallyignite it, okay. And when that
when you when you combust thesecombustible materials and a

(58:31):
nitrogen environment, okay, youproduce very little co2. It goes
primarily into carbon. Havingsaid that, remember, we're in
the business of Point Sourcecarbon. So if there's any carbon
coming out of the pirate visors,we can certainly capture it and
put it in and put it through acoating system and capture it.

(58:51):
Algae love carbon, they lovecarbon, we need carbon. Okay,
yeah.

Dina Rasor (58:56):
Okay. And kit, is it possible to capture other
greenhouse gases with thissystem? Or is co2, co2, the main
product because like, everyone'sfreaking out about methane now,
because of all the leaking outof fossil fuel pipelines,

Steve McDaniel (59:11):
is a very legitimate concern. Methane, as
you probably well know, is amuch stronger greenhouse gas
than co2. And we'll talk aboutwhy that is, but let's not do
that right now. Remember that,that methane is B is his
burnable. And so that's whyyou'll see it being flared many,

(59:34):
many places, okay. Many dumpsaround the world. I was just
reading about India, they havespontaneous fires, that breakout
because of the methane hasignited there. Okay. So once
when methane burns, it produceshydrogen and co2. If we we can
pull because remember, ourtechnology is agnostic as to the

(59:56):
location. So if you've got aflare or a plant are a dump or a
coal mine spent coal mine thatmethane is still coming out of
it. You can place these thesedevices next to the source and
capture, take the methaneignited and capture the co2.
That's we haven't done that yet.
Okay, but we believe that that'svery doable. I thought you were

(01:00:19):
going to ask me anotherquestion, though. Are there? Are
there other gases that we canwhat we call atmospheric farm?
And the answer is yes. In fact,we've done it and published a
paper on it. Nitrogen issomething that we need as a
society, we need nitrogen forall sorts of plastics, nitrogen

(01:00:40):
for medicines, we need nitrogensfor farming in the form of
fertilizer, we got to have that.
All right. Well, the way wemainly get that right now is the
haber bosch process is extremelydirty. And apparently, as it is,
is responsible for somewherebetween one and 2% of the total

(01:01:01):
carbon emissions on planet Eartheach year, we've got to come up
with a better way to getnitrogen out of the atmosphere
and convert it to ammonia. Well,we're lucky by blue green algae
have some cousins, and they'recalled nitrogen fixing bacteria.

(01:01:21):
You we have taken and replacedthe carbon capturing bacteria
with nitrogen fixing bacteria.
And we have been able to obtainammonia that way. So if we can
do that, and we have proven thatwe can in the lab, then there,
then we can pretty instantlyknock down one to 2%. If we can
prevent the use of the haberbosch process. One other thing,

(01:01:43):
and then I'll be quiet about it.
All right. Remember thatphotosynthesis is taking carbon
dioxide and combining it up withwater. sunlight and water are
converted to a sugar compound,glucose plus, and here's the

(01:02:06):
here's the trick. Oxygen. Ohtwo. When you are able to
produce oxygen through aprocess, then you can oxygenate
things. Many places in the oceanare dead. Because the oxygen
levels are so low. San FranciscoBay. I mean, it's pretty. It's

(01:02:28):
pretty sad. The estuaries.

Dina Rasor (01:02:29):
Okay, not quite not quite now. It's all right. It's
not nearly as bad as what'scoming out of the Mississippi
River. And that giant did so Oh,absolutely.

Steve McDaniel (01:02:38):
I agree with you there. Yeah. But there are kids
out to the water around theplanet that need that oxygen.
They also need to remove theco2, but they need that oxygen.
So when we say we're mining co2,we're also producing oxygen. So
that makes sense. Yeah, andbecause we've got it, we can
capture it. When I'm not sayingwe're gonna make bottles of

(01:02:59):
Boston. It's just producing itand and letting go for the
system.

Beth McDaniel (01:03:06):
But when he says Just to add to what he's saying,
what he's saying is our systemcan be modified by just changing
out the algae to a differentkind of algae, and we're
capturing a new greenhouse gasnitrogen,

Steve McDaniel (01:03:17):
and we publish these results. Okay. One more
thing before I get leave thegases. I'm sorry, I get so
excited about this. In fact, wehave we think that pretty soon I
want best to talk about 40 leadan initiative and international
initiative that we're gettinginto. They're very excited about
the possibility of us taking andcapturing the nitrogen in the

(01:03:39):
form of ammonia. And thencatalytically cracking that
ammonia to produce hydrogen. Andhydrogen is an alternative fuel.

Dina Rasor (01:03:50):
Yeah, and it's not one of those fake clean
hydrogens like like bluehydrogen or hydrogen. It's the
real green. That means the bluehydrogen is a fate that's

Steve McDaniel (01:04:02):
blue hydrogen is is two electrodes in a bucket of
water, the electricity comingfrom natural gas. Green hydrogen
is the same thing. Only theelectricity is coming from solar
power or wind power. We like tocall ours a blue green hydrogen
is coming from blue green back.
Thanks. Okay,

Dina Rasor (01:04:23):
Greg, any more questions that you might have?

Gregory A. Williams (01:04:27):
Not for me?
No. That's been veryenlightening.

Steve McDaniel (01:04:31):
Can we Yeah. And talk to you about could we talk
to you about this introduction?
I'd like for bets explain to usvery excited. Sure. Sure. Go
ahead.

Beth McDaniel (01:04:39):
Yeah, um, I think you guys know James Scott, and
he's head of the embassy rowproject and then biotech pre
accelerator and started an NGOcalled NGO called net zero and
we were contacted by him andabout two months ago. And then
we just been on this trajectoryever since but I just returned
from DC a couple days ago whereI met with well, the I met with

(01:05:04):
some folks in the Bulgarianembassy embassy. They Well,
we've Steve and I had Steve, itpresented there a couple of
weeks ago at the National PressClub. And they had heard his
presentation. And about carboncapture coatings were very
excited about the technology andasked us to come back. And so
they've agreed to do a trademission. And also, they want to

(01:05:28):
build a pilot facility, kind oflike the one that we're doing in
Tracy, California, over inBulgaria, in order to be a
launch pad into the EU for thistechnology. So we're very
excited about that. And youknow, in a couple months, we've
gone from Texas to internationaland so who knows where we'll end
up, but I think we're going toend up in the EU.

Steve McDaniel (01:05:52):
People who say say, you know, are we going to
be able to do it? And I alwayssay if we can get the public
will. And if we can get thepolitical will to do so. Yes, we
can. Well, Bulgaria has both thepublic and the political will to
do so very clearly.

Dina Rasor (01:06:09):
Okay. All right.
Well, I want you to know that weare going to put all your
reports, all the things you'vetalked about all the all the
videos you want in whatever onour website, on our blog, on our
website, we're so when peoplego, when people go to listen,
they can go to our website andget it in, and then go to your
website and get the information.

(01:06:31):
So we want to make sure thisthis gets out. It's It's really
amazing. I, I'm reallyappreciative with this. My
father was a PhD physicist, andhe liked to tinker in this kind
of stuff to sense that he wasalways trying to go look beyond
the obvious. And so you I cantell that as a scientist, you're

(01:06:52):
you're you're you're a tinkerer,and I like that, you know,
instead of just buying whateverthey say, has to be done. And
then quite impressive, whatyou've done, and I will be happy
to come down and follow you. Andyou know, I may ask some really
pointed questions, but it soundsit sounds like you know, you're
not going to be getting anygovernment money soon. Are you

(01:07:14):
thinking of that?

Steve McDaniel (01:07:17):
Well, that's an interesting question. There are
some initiatives within thefederal government to promote
these kinds of things. And interms of tax exemptions, so
there are some programs andwe're aggressively going after
that, because it reduces ourcosts dramatically. All right.

(01:07:37):
And

Beth McDaniel (01:07:38):
finance plan by money. I forget what it's
called. Yeah, sorry, this getsinto the moment. But yeah, there
is money for carbon removal.
Yeah.

Dina Rasor (01:07:49):
A lot of money, a lot of money for carbon,
renewable, nubile, but I'mforgetful. Fortunately, it's
being hijacked very quickly.
Okay. So keep us keep us up onthat, too. Because we're always
very interested in finding ifyou're finding that the federal
government's not veryresponsive, or you're getting
elbowed out by the moretraditional ones. We really
would like to hear about that,because we want to see how the
government's doing. We'rewatching the government spend,

(01:08:12):
and we're looking at the privatesector and to see what what
they're doing. So when once youget to the government's force,
we might like to have you comeback.

Gregory A. Williams (01:08:24):
Thank you so much. Yeah. So once again, I
want to identify you by name.
This is Dr. Steve McDaniel, andand Beth McDaniel of founders
and leaders of reactivesurfaces, a company that makes
paints that do all kinds ofamazing things. And we've been
talking about carbon capture andsequestration tonight. So we

(01:08:45):
will have links on our webpagefor you to continue learning
about these technologies. And soI hope you'll visit climate
money watchdog.org again tolearn more about us and consider
making a donation. So thanksagain, and we look forward to
our next episode.