Dutch start-up Brineworks has been awarded a €1.8 million ($1.92 million) non-dilutive grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator to advance its electrochemical platform that simultaneously captures carbon dioxide from air and produces green hydrogen.
The funding — granted in one of the EIC’s most competitive rounds, with only 71 winners out of more than 1,200 applicants — will support Brineworks’ first full-scale pilot project.
The company’s patented electrolyzer, designed to run on variable solar and wind power, uses low-cost, widely available materials and leverages seawater electrolysis. In operation, the system removes CO2 directly from the atmosphere while generating hydrogen, which together can be used to produce synthetic fuels such as e-methanol or sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
Scaling a Dual-Use Electrolyzer
Brineworks’ co-founder and CTO, Dr. Joseph Perryman, said the company has already demonstrated capture costs below $100 per metric ton — a long-sought benchmark in the carbon removal industry.
While still in early-stage conditions, the milestone suggests a pathway to affordable and scalable deployment. “That’s the threshold the world has been waiting for, and now the scale-up begins,” Perryman said.
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The grant builds on Brineworks’ €2 million seed round in 2024, backed by investors including SeaX Ventures, Pale Blue Dot, First Momentum, AiiM Partners, Energie360°, and Katapult.
With modular units as its long-term goal, Brineworks aims to deliver carbon dioxide removal (CDR) at scale while supplying clean hydrogen for e-fuels.
In an industry where many electrochemical direct air capture (DAC) concepts remain confined to laboratories or rely on unproven cost projections, Brineworks’ progress toward commercial demonstration positions it as an emerging leader in dual-use climate technology.
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