RepAir Carbon's battery-style carbon capture technology validated in Nature Energy

Peer-reviewed study with the University of Delaware reports 50% less energy use than conventional direct air capture systems

Tel Aviv, Luxembourg and Newark (Delaware), 22 September 2026: RepAir Carbon, developer of ultra-efficient electrochemical carbon capture technology, and the University of Delaware today publish peer-reviewed results in Nature Energy showing that a carbon capture cell built on rechargeable battery chemistry can remove CO₂ from ambient air using as little as half of the energy required by the liquid-based systems that dominate direct air capture today.  

Energy is the largest operating cost in direct air capture. Most systems running at scale release captured CO₂ using heat and consume 1.5 to 2.5 MWh per tonne CO2. At European industrial heat and electricity prices that is more than €200 per tonne in energy alone, several times the current EU carbon price. The cell described in the paper is the building block of RepAir's ElectraStack system - it captures and releases CO₂ at high purity as it charges and discharges, using the same nickel hydroxide chemistry found in rechargeable batteries. The paper reports the same low energy consumption at three levels:

• Independently, at the University of Delaware: a 25 cm² laboratory cell captured CO₂ from ambient air (400 ppm) at an average energy cost of 1.15 MWh per tonne CO₂.

• Over time, at RepAir: a manufacturable single cell ran for more than 5,000 hours on ambient air and reached 0.46 MWh per tonne CO₂ by the end of the test.

• At larger scale, at RepAir: a nine-cell stack of 300 cm² cells averaged 0.83 MWh per tonne CO₂ with a pressure drop below 300 Pa, meeting the requirements for efficient direct air capture at scale.

Electrochemical carbon capture is a growing field, but every other approach still depends on a liquid solvent or electrolyte. RepAir's is the only carbon capture technology based entirely on dry chemistry, with no solvents, liquids or heat at any stage. A dry cell has no solvent to degrade, replace or contain, so there is no bespoke chemical plant to build at each site. Capture equipment can instead be mass-manufactured and shipped as modules, as solar panels and battery cells are today.

The paper's supplementary information also reports results at 1% CO₂, the concentration found in aluminium smelter flue gas. The cell is designed to operate from 0.04 to 5% CO₂, where conventional capture struggles. That covers aluminium and copper smelting, both critical to the energy transition, and gas-fired power generation, now expanding to meet electricity demand from AI. RepAir's customers are the operators of these assets, together with carbon dioxide removal developers and e-fuel producers that need a reliable CO₂ feedstock.

"Our customers ask which carbon capture technology can prove it will reach the cost target at scale. Operating cost is energy, and this paper settles that with peer-reviewed data. Capital cost is whether the equipment can be built on automated production lines that already exist. That is what we are building now." said Amir Shiner, CEO and co-founder of RepAir Carbon.

"Nickel hydroxide has been used in rechargeable batteries for many years, so it has a well established global supply chain and we know exactly how it behaves in an electrochemical cell," said Professor Yushan Yan, Henry B. du Pont Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware and co-founder of RepAir Carbon. "What is new is arranging two identical electrodes of it around a membrane so that the cell captures CO₂ on one side and releases it on the other, with the relatively reversible electrode reactions themselves consuming very little energy. The remaining losses are engineering problems with known solutions so they can be further reduced."

The paper also sets out a cost pathway from $566 per tonne for the current pilot generation to below $100 per tonne at volume, following learning rates observed in the battery industry. RepAir has since worked with several Tier-1 engineering, procurement and construction companies to confirm the roadmap.

RepAir has raised $30 million to date, and is supported by the European Innovation Council. Its technology has been selected for direct air capture projects on both sides of the Atlantic, and is now scaling up.

Notes   

The paper: "A Ni(OH)₂ symmetric battery cell for hydroxide exchange membrane-based direct air capture of CO₂." Nature Energy, published online 22 September 2026, 10:00 BST. DOI: 10.1038/s41560-026-02129-z. Available at nature.com/articles/s41560-026-02129-z The paper is scheduled for the November 2026 print issue.  

The technology: RepAir Carbon’s technology originated in Professor Yushan Yan's laboratory at the University of Delaware. RepAir holds a global, exclusive licence to the foundational patents and has taken the technology from laboratory cell to industrial system, developing the durable electrodes, stack hardware, system architecture and integration at its facility in Israel, while Delaware continued independent research on the chemistry. This is the first peer-reviewed publication of the technology, with its results contributed by both RepAir and the University of Delaware.

About RepAir Carbon  

RepAir Carbon delivers ultra-efficient CO₂ capture with a scalable electrochemical system that reduces energy use by 70% compared to conventional methods. Requiring no heat, liquids, or solvents, the technology works across applications - from direct air capture to diluted industrial emissions. Particularly effective for post-combustion CO₂ from gas turbines, we enable an energy- and cost-efficient pathway to low-carbon power. www.repair-carbon.com