NY based climate technology start-up Airbuild transforms buildings, landscapes, and industrial spaces while addressing critical environmental challenges of water contamination and energy inefficiency

“Airbuild is a science and energy startup specializing in river bioremediation and sustainable resource recovery. Through partnerships with local governments and canal companies, we implement systems that extract excess nutrients from waterways and municipal sewer lagoons to improve water quality and downstream ecosystems. Airbuild transforms harvested algae and local organic waste into biochar, which is then used as fertilizer delivering both environmental and economic benefits to the communities it serves.”

 --David Gory, CEO & Co-Founder Airbuild

Interview with David Gory

By Suzanne Forcese

Lighty edited for brevity and clarity

WT: Congratulations on being named an Uplink Top Innovator! What has this recognition meant for you and the Airbuild Team!

Gory: We feel grateful, blessed and pleasantly surprised at the opportunity Uplink has opened for us at a time when exposure is so important. This will allow us—in a political environment where many companies are losing money and grants are being cancelled for many start-ups -- to attract the people, the partnerships and the backing required.

WT:Your website describes the Airbuild Family as a team of engineers, microbiologists, and business strategists committed to a greener future with carbon negative infrastructure.

Please introduce yourself to our viewers, giving us a glimpse of your background, and the journey birthed the company.

Gory: I spent the first 16 years of my life in Nigeria then came to the US for college at Cleveland State University for my undergrad degree in Mechanical Engineering, followed up with a MBNA Master's and a second Master’s in cybersecurity.

When studying at Cleveland State University, I met one of the former co-founders (who has since taken another career path). He suggested I meet with Jon Bucar who wanted to start a company centered around carbon capture. I jumped in!

The three of us pursued a long ideation stage realizing we wanted to work with algae because of the co-benefits that align with our mission.

We then brought in our fourth co-founder and CTO, Dr. Richard Mariita. It was an incredible journey going through Techstar Accelerators. We raised our pre-seed round and now we are deploying our product.

WT: What has been the underlying motivating factor of the Airbuild story?

Gory: We started with a carbon story that links into our personal stories. For me and my family, we grew up drinking water from wells because our natural water sources were polluted. We would go days, weeks, months, even years without access to electricity. The first time I saw 24/7 energy as a theme was when I came to the US at age 16.

My Co-founder, Richard who grew up in Kenya, lost his mother and sister to water-borne diseases. He has dedicated his life to making sure no one else is subjected to the same fate.

The WHO and the United Nations issued reports on the interconnection between health/respiratory issues/early death with toxic air. All these problems are interconnected. Carbon can’t be treated without treating water. Water can’t be treated without treating carbon. All the problems of health, toxicity of air and water pollution are intrinsically connected while the solutions to these problems remain unconnected.

That is why water is very important to our story.

WT: You are integrating microalgae cultivation, advanced photovoltaics and smart environmental controls. How does the Airbuild system work?

Gory: Our self-powered systems utilize microalgae to capture carbon and treat polluted water, rivers, lakes, and lagoons. We take the waste of that water treatment process and combine it with local organic waste. Then we pyrolyze that waste to create biochar which is great for permanent carbon storage as well as biochar for agriculture.

WT: Why are microalgae the secret sauce?

Gory: Microalgae are not novel. Microalgae have been cultivated for hundreds if not thousands of years but lately the research has been solely around producing biofuel placing the focus on increasing the lipid content.

Our concept has been to cultivate algae for impact. Algae are responsible for over 50% of the carbon capture that exists on this planet today. Algae remove nitrogen and phosphates; compete with bacteria contaminates; absorb heavy metals, PFAS, and microplastics. With the focus on impact, we can tie algae to existing technology. Nature and technology can work together for an abundance of benefits.

WT: Where do you deploy the system? How does it operate?
Gory: It can be deployed next to rivers, lakes, municipal sewer lagoons. We take up that water; the algae treat the water. The treated water is then returned to the river. Now the level of pollution in that river is diluted thereby restoring the ecosystem.

WT: Where do the photovoltaics come in?

Gory: 55% of the energy of traditional solar is lost to heat. Our revolutionary solar panels are generating energy. In our system microalgae are exposed to photovoltaics in a unique manner by the cooling bed of water under the solar cells which boosts productivity by 12.5%.

By doing so our system powers itself. We do not have to go outside the grid. All the energy required is provided while the algae do what algae do best.

WT: How is your system disrupting current systems?

Gory: That’s where the automation comes in. The self-powered tag is huge. Since the carbon capture industry utilizes so much energy critics point out the imbalance.

This is the side we are disrupting. Our systems have zero emissions while integrating systems that already exist.

WT: How is your system revolutionizing traditional concepts of pyrolysis?

Gory: We’ve got the waste of our product. The city already has organic waste.

We combine the organic waste with our algae and pyrolyze that mixture. The resulting biochar has nitrogen /phosphates /carbon content that is higher than traditional biochar. The revolutionary part is the mindful integration of all these strategic inputs to create a hub.

At full deployment on one site we can capture carbon, treat water and process waste.

WT: Can you give us an example?

Gory: We’re having conversations with the Navajo tribe in San Juan County. In Utah, the Navajo reside on a reservation of more than 1,155,000 acres in the southeastern corner of the state. More than half of the population of San Juan County is comprised of Navajo people, the majority of whom live south of the San Juan River.

The river is so polluted that the cows do not drink from it. At the same time their waste management system is non-existent. They individually burn their waste – the worst possible scenario because ash falls on the plants which provide food for the people and their animals. In one deployment we can clear the air in that environment while treating the water and processing the waste. That’s the revolution.

WT: What is the Airbuild Biopod?

Gory: The Biopod is the go-between an open pond system and a traditional bioreactor. We looked at the way algae are cultivated traditionally, and we really have an either/or. Either you use an open pond system because you are targeting large volumes, or you use a photo bioreactor because you are controlling a targeted environment. We felt they should not be mutually exclusive. Our team of engineers designed the biopod as the go-between.

It’s an enclosed open-pond system that is fully controlled, fully automated, fully regulated so that we can hit the volumes necessary to save our planet and provide sufficient waste to be pyrolyzed.

In tandem this environment is controlled to ensure no loss of algae. There is no harm to the algae due to harmful UV while at the same time we are optimizing the process.

The process is currently estimated to go at 15-day cycles but by the end of the year we estimate cutting that time by roughly 45% down to an 8-day cycle.

WT: What stage are you at right now? Have you moved to a pilot?

Gory: Yes. We broke ground on a demo facility last month and we are currently looking at having it fully operational by the end of August.

We are deploying Green River, Utah. We are grateful to the City of Green River for giving us our land lease for one dollar, especially at this time. We are deploying close to the Green River itself because it has very high levels of E Coli. The Green River flows through Utah, flows into the Colorado River that supplies water to California, Arizona and Nevada. If that water becomes too polluted, those states will suffer.

We are taking the river water into our system to be cleaned by the algae followed by a dose of UV. Then the water is sent back to the river.

At full deployment we estimate hitting 50% of the day flow of that river which is going to have an aggressive impact in restoring that ecosystem. 

By Day 500 we can expect to see aquatic life restored; discoloration disappear; an end to toxic algal blooms because our algae will out compete with the algae that is there.

WT: And the biochar?

Gory: We are still sourcing a pyrolysis machine. We’ve signed a 16,000 ton off take agreement with Carbon Future for carbon offsets. We're leveraging that to get our pyrolysis machine so that we can go into full deployment.

We have also just signed an exclusive waste management agreement with the City of Green River so that we have a steady stream of the organic waste to be pyrolyzed with our algae.

WT: Please describe your business model.

Gory: We have a few revenue generators. Cities pay us to deploy our pods which work for bioremediation. It also works to alleviate loads on municipal sewer lagoons. There are cities pumping wastewater into a landfill and then waiting for the water to evaporate. But we are seeing erratic weather patterns so unpredictable to the point where cities have built lagoons to last fifty years but have only lasted for three.

In our foolproof solution where we deploy, take the water from these sewer lagoons, treat the water, then send the water down to the river our project development is our first revenue generator. The second is the carbon offsets, since we do capture and store carbon in biochar.

And the third is the biochar itself. We incentivize cities to work with us by giving the biochar to local farmers in that environment who bring us their waste.

Farmers who bring us their organic waste are avoiding the landfill route and the release of methane into the air. Those farmers are entitled to free biochar.

WT: Moving forward...what’s on the horizon?

Gory: The vision for this company from the outset has been to prove how our solution works; scale it out here in the US initially; and then go global with this solution because water is a global problem.

We need three inputs for our deployment:

• Carbon which is everywhere in the air
• Polluted water which is everywhere on the planet and
• Waste which is everywhere

There is no obstacle to our scale.

Our goal is to solve this problem on a global level making sure that kids and families in those situations do not face the same fate that Richard and I did.