Water, Lime, and the Battle Against Carbon Dioxide

In a world where every ton of CO₂ is counted, CarbonBlue offers a new way of looking at lime, water, and industrial collaboration. Instead of building special chimneys for this process, the company harnesses water from existing infrastructure. It directly draws carbon dioxide from it, thereby transforming industry from a polluter into a partner in climate rehabilitation.

Addressing the climate crisis isn’t only about renewable energy; it also involves reducing the existing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Each year, more than 35 billion tons of CO₂ are emitted into the atmosphere worldwide, most of it from burning fossil fuels, industrial production, and construction. Current carbon dioxide reduction solutions, such as extracting carbon from the air, known as direct air capture (DAC), and other carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods, typically require substantial energy and expensive facilities and often struggle to integrate into existing settings.

CarbonBlue offers a different method based on a circular, direct, and innovative process: using existing water infrastructure and leveraging the natural interface between air and water to absorb CO₂, without the need to build dedicated, energy-intensive, or costly facilities. Using the company’s unique technology, the carbon in the water binds to lime and forms limestone, which can be collected and either sequestered or used in industry. The low-carbon water returns to the environment and absorbs additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In this way, CarbonBlue reduces carbon dioxide concentrations in the environment while also creating environmental value and generating economic benefits.

The company was founded by Iddo Tsur, who brings extensive experience managing large-scale projects, and Dr. Dan Deviri, a physicist. Together, they set out, in Tsur’s words, “to participate in the ecological revolution we so desperately need in order to continue living well on this planet.” Tsur notes that effective sustainability solutions require the ability to address complex, systemic challenges involving multiple constraints, long-term thinking, and the understanding that meaningful development takes years-especially in industrial technology.

The technology developed by the company, in part supported by the Innovation Authority, is already in pilot trials and integrates several disciplines. The team consists of experienced engineers from the water and infrastructure sectors, physicists, process engineers, operations professionals, and others.

“Each team member brings something different to the table,” says Tsur, “but for a climate solution to succeed, it must also make business sense. That’s why we’re investing along the entire value chain and building a company that’s both innovative and economically sound.”

Clean Lime – Clean Industry

“The climate reality affects everyone,” says Tsur, “but no one feels personally responsible or believes they should bear the cost. In other words, there isn’t a single defined end consumer. It’s a challenge that needs mobilization of the entire economy.” As Tsur explains, this shift is already underway in Europe, with the United States beginning to follow suit with more incentives, regulations, and supportive policies. “Ultimately, however, changing the way the world has done things for decades requires solutions based on a long-term approach.”

From the outset, Tsur and Deviri chose to invest in a technology that would drive a business, not just their conscience into a profitable product that streamlines processes, enhances performance, reduces costs, and provides immediate value to customers, all while removing carbon from the atmosphere. In other words, the result is dual benefits, both environmental and economic.

Unlike capital-intensive solutions that require building facilities from scratch, CarbonBlue’s vision is rooted in what already works: existing water infrastructure, industrial processes, and value chains. The company does not seek to fight the industry, but rather, to harness it. Instead of building new plants, CarbonBlue integrates into existing facilities, turning them into tools for emission reduction.

The innovation begins with lime, a standard industrial material used across countless industries, including construction, manufacturing, and water treatment. The traditional method for producing lime is highly carbon-intensive, requiring the heating of limestone to high temperatures using fossil fuels, a process which releases large quantities of CO₂.

Traditional lime production processes currently account for about 8% of global carbon emissions. CarbonBlue offers an entirely different method, one that uses a low-temperature chemical process powered solely by electricity. The result is emission-free lime that can be produced with renewable energy at any location with access to electricity and calcium-bearing feedstock, such as limestone.

The lime produced can be sold to traditional lime consumers, thereby reducing related emissions, or added to water in another process developed by the company, resulting in a simple yet highly effective chemical reaction in which the lime bonds with the carbon dioxide dissolved in the water, turning it into tiny limestone pellets. These pellets can then be collected, recycled, or sold for industrial use, making lime production itself a method for direct carbon removal without generating emissions.

The company’s sustainable lime, combined with the innovative carbon-absorption process, creates a system that leverages existing infrastructure to transform it into a carbon-absorption mechanism, not by altering the materials used, but by changing their production method.

Pilots and Planning the Future

CarbonBlue’s uniqueness lies in the way it connects environmental goals to industrial needs. Rather than separating emission reduction from economic efficiency, the company offers a solution that integrates seamlessly into the existing value chain without disrupting or replacing it. The lime it produces has a significantly lower carbon footprint, can directly replace conventional industrial materials, and offers a real environmental advantage: carbon capture within water systems.

Instead of viewing industry as part of the problem, CarbonBlue turns it into part of the solution. The company doesn’t change what industry consumes but rather how it produces, so that every use becomes an act of cleaning the atmosphere.

CarbonBlue is already in advanced implementation stages. A pilot project at the Ma’agan Michael desalination plant enables the team to measure, test, and refine the process, which combines the company’s unique lime with a water-based carbon-absorption system. The results are twofold: a reduction in dissolved carbon in water that improves desalination efficiency, yielding up to 10% more water at lower operational costs, and carbon dioxide-free water runoff that absorbs additional CO₂ from the atmosphere.

At the same time, CarbonBlue is conducting a pilot for zero-emission lime production, a material traditionally produced through emission-intensive processes but now manufactured by the company using electricity rather than fossil fuels. The method is based on decomposing limestone with acid, followed by recycling the acid at the end of the process, thereby eliminating the need for external feedstocks. Operating at low temperatures enables the use of renewable energy and further reduces emissions.

In addition to its independent economic and environmental value, the lime produced in this way can also be used as a material that purifies water from carbon dioxide. A controlled chemical reaction conducted in a dedicated reactor converts carbon into solid limestone, which can be collected, recycled, or sold for industrial applications. The method delivers a double benefit of creating an in-demand industrial material while capturing carbon as part of the ongoing process.

Planning for the next phase is already underway, the construction of a semi-industrial facility as preparation for widespread deployment. “For climate technologies to become globally relevant, they must meet industrial standards,” says Iddo Tsur. “At CarbonBlue, we aim to achieve this through a cost-competitive process that has a significantly lower carbon footprint than traditional methods, and that can be quickly assimilated across existing industries worldwide.”

Israel’s participation in COP29, the 2024 UN Climate Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, emphasizes our commitment to promoting breakthrough technological solutions to address the global climate challenge.