Travertine Technologies partners with Sabin Metal to build a circular plant in New York that converts waste into valuable feedstock.

In a project that will scale industrialized carbon capture technology to convert sulfate waste into valuable feedstock, Travertine Technologies has announced a partnership with Sabin Metal Corp., the largest independently owned precious metals refiner in North America, to build a demonstration plant with $10.7 million in financing that includes $7.5 million from Builders Vision and $3.2 million by the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority.

Travertine

Travertine CEO Laura Lammers and COO Owen Cadwalader at the left of their team in front of a direct air capture unit.

This follows $8.5 million announced earlier this year that was co-led by Holcim MAQER Ventures, with contributions from the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment and venture capital firms Clean Energy Ventures and Bidra Innovation Ventures.

"[W]e see massive potential for the Travertine Process to address difficult decarbonization challenges, including producing fossil-free sulfuric acid, green hydrogen, green cement, and cost-effective, large-scale carbon removal," said James Lindsay, investment director at Builders Vision. "Travertine's platform technology uses a true systems approach that can significantly contribute to a healthier and more sustainable planet. We are excited to champion this groundbreaking process."

Travertine facilitates carbon-negative, zero-waste upcycling and production for mining, fertilizer, and metals operations around the world. The "Travertine Process" was inspired by leveraging natural rock weathering and mineralization with the scale, speed, and economics of heavy industry to eliminate chemical waste and permanently store CO2.

The process has three major operations: electrolysis splits aqueous sulfate into sulfuric acid and caustic solutions, direct air capture uses the caustic solution to absorb CO2 from the air into a carbonate solution, and finally, the carbonate solution is reacted with sulfate byproducts to produce carbonate minerals and regenerate aqueous sulfate.

Established in 1945, Sabin has grown from a one-man scrap metal operation to the largest domestically owned precious metals refiner in North America. The company has worked with byproducts of the petroleum, chemical, pharmaceutical, electronics, and hydrogen industries to recover platinum, palladium, ruthenium, rhodium, rhenium, gold, and silver from secondary sources to make pure metal and metal compounds. Integrating the Travertine Process into its operations will enable even greater circularity.

Travertine

Surveying the Sabin site for the demo plant.

The demonstration plant is slated for commissioning in mid-2025 and will be located at Sabin's main facility outside of Rochester, New York, formerly home to a gypsum mine.

Once operational, the carbon-negative process will be able to upcycle hundreds of tons of waste gypsum at the site and tens of tons of CO2 from the air per year into a supply of sustainable, fossil-free sulfuric acid for Sabin's recycling and refining business, green hydrogen, and calcium carbonate.

The latter product is a permanent carbon sink that is increasingly used in cement to reduce its carbon footprint. (Further expansion could supply enough green hydrogen to replace natural gas for high-temperature industrial processes at the site.)

"This demo plant is an exciting next step as we scale up the Travertine Process, which can decouple critical element extraction and refining from fossil-derived sulfur. Because of the scale of global sulfuric acid use, our process has economical gigaton-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) potential while simultaneously eliminating industrial sulfate waste," said Travertine CEO Laura Lammers. "We're thrilled to partner with a mission-aligned and innovative company like Sabin Metal."

"Our commitment to the planet extends beyond recycling precious metals from industrial feedstocks," said Sam Sabin, strategic advisor at Sabin Metal. "We are proud to host Travertine's demo plant at our New York site, not only to increase circularity and sustainability in our operations, but also to show the world the tremendous potential of their core process."

In addition to metals recovery and refining, the Travertine Process can be applied across a range of critical element production processes central to the energy transition including lithium, nickel, and phosphorus.