Captain Energy, a Houston-based provider of ammonia-to-industrial heat technology, is seeking strategic investors for an early-stage seed round with plans for an eventual Series A, co-founder and interim-CEO Kirk Coburn said in an interview.
The company is developing a single-step process that can create industrial heat from cracked ammonia up to 700 degrees Celsius with zero NOX emissions, with hydrogen as a byproduct, Coburn said. The process uses a ceramic-based tubular solid oxide fuel cell that Captain manufactures in Dundee, Scotland.
“The results from the testing are that we’re 85% efficient,” Coburn said.
The company is “past the lab stage” and needs to develop a pilot product to showcase to customers, Coburn said. About $5m will get the company to a 100-kilogram-per-day product, up from 25 kilograms now.
“That’s not, probably, big enough for most customers, but we can stack them,” Coburn said. “At this point we need to demonstrate commercially the product… after showcasing it we want to make larger units.”
Captain is owned by three co-founders, including Coburn. They have an 18-month line of site on a “much larger” Series A, Coburn said.
Strategic investors that would be end users of the technology are of interest to the company, particularly in Asian and European markets.
“We’re not getting in the game of making ammonia,” Coburn said. “We have to buy green ammonia.”
The company’s model is at “grid-parity” in Europe now, Coburn said, pointing to Germany in particular.
“We think we’re almost at subsidy-free pricing,” he said.
