Boston-based Mantel Capture, an MIT spinoff developing a carbon capture system using molten salts, has raised $30 million in Series A funding co-led by Shell Ventures and Eni Next. Other investors included New York’s Hartree, New Arosa Ventures, Newlab and MCJ Collective; Brazil’s Vale Ventures, Houston’s New Climate Ventures, Britain’s bp ventures and Engine Ventures, also an MIT spinoff.
Mantel was founded in 2022 by the trio of CEO Cameron Halliday, former Boston Consulting Group executive Danielle Rapson and Sean Robertson, who has a Ph.D. in nuclear materials science. Halliday has a Ph.D in a chemical engineering and an M.B.A. from MIT. Rapson, an engineer with an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, serves as Mantel’s chief operating officer, while Robertson is chief technology officer.
Transformative Potential
Emerging from the Hatton Research Group at the MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, Mantel raised a $2 million seed funding round and joined the Breakthrough Energy Fellows accelerator program.
Mantel’s technology is believed to have transformative potential. It uses molten borates, the “only high-temperature liquid-phase carbon capture material,” to capture carbon dioxide at the source of emission. The company claims it could capture 95% of the carbon emitted at refineries and industrial sites. Additionally, by leveraging high-grade heat at the sites, the startup’s technology saves significant costs.
Theoretically, Mantel could lower cost to about $30 to $50 a ton, Reuters reported, making it economically viable in many countries offering either incentives for carbon capture or taxing emissions, and far below competing systems.
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Critical Demo Ahead
“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,” said Halliday. “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.”
Mantel will use the Series A funding in a demonstration project in which it targets a 10-fold increase in carbon capture from the lab scale of half a ton per day. Overall, the project aims to capture 1,800 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year at an industrial site.
“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,” said Boston-based Eni Next’s CEO, Clara Andreoletti.
