Mantra acquired the 100% outright ownership of a chemical processing technology developed by the University of British Columbia's Clean Energy Research Center, entitled the Electroreduction of Carbon Dioxide (ERC). Powered by renewable energy, ERC combines captured carbon dioxide with water to produce high value materials, including: formic acid, formate salts, oxalic acid, and methanol. As a result, Mantra’s ERC is one of very few examples of true Carbon Capture and Recycling, versus Carbon Capture and Storage. Moreover, I believe that Mantra’s ERC process may be the only viable, large-scale alternative. The Company has been awarded one patent for the process and others are pending.

An ERC Primer
One of the keys to the elegance of the proprietary process is the science itself. The ERC is based upon electrochemistry, an established and well understood branch of chemicals processing. Electrochemistry is developed first for a single cell, and each cell thereafter is identical to the others. Scale up is a matter of installing the number of cells needed to meet the production goal, not of developing and expanding a single chemical process. By introducing H2O and power to the captured CO2 the ERC engages in an Electroreduction of the CO2, thereby harnessing the chemical power and properties of the CO2 as a feedstock for other uses. Therefore, Mantra is truly able to generate byproducts worth billions in revenue from the massive fossil fuel emissions. Interestingly, not only can the process also be driven by renewable energy but there is potential for this technology to be applied in a closed-loop fuel cell cycle, whereby carbon dioxide is converted into a fuel that is then used in the cell to generate energy.

A large Bavarian Brewery which generates a lot of co2 when brewing beer is set to be a pilot site for demonstrating the ERC. I think between now and the end of the year when the Paris Climate Conference takes place this carbon capture and use technology needs to be exposed.