A company named Avnos launched a new facility called Project Brighton, which pulls carbon dioxide directly from the air and produces clean water. It also manages to do this without needing outside heat.

The U.S. Office of Naval Research backs this project. Avnos is using the carbon captured by the agency to produce sustainable aviation fuel. This new facility is built to extract 450 tons of CO2 from the air annually. At the same time, it produces 475,000 gallons of clean water. This setup could be helpful for data centers, underground carbon storage, or future fuel production sites. Essentially, the facility is an all-in-one center for energy, water, and emission reduction.

All-In-One Site

Photo: Ivan Marc/Shutterstock

Project Brighton is set up next to the company’s research center on Milltown Road. Bringing research, testing, and product development together on one campus makes it easier to build new things.

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“Brighton is our largest operating deployment to date and demonstrates our ability to deliver infrastructure at increasing scale,” said Will Kain, Founder and CEO of Avnos. “It also provides the operational experience and real-world performance data that will help accelerate future commercial deployments, while helping customers address interconnected energy, water, and emissions challenges.”

Seeing the facility working makes local leaders very happy.

“Project Brighton reflects the kind of investment Somerset County, and New Jersey more broadly, works hard to attract – technology companies building real infrastructure at scale,” said Chris Edwards, President and CEO of Somerset County Business Partnership. “Avnos has been part of our business community for several years now, and it’s great to see this project reach operational status.”

More to Come

With Brighton up and running, Avnos is moving on to its next site, Project Cedar. The company has up to $17 million in financing to build it. Cedar will use four capture modules designed to be built faster and scaled up more easily. Overall, Avnos has over $100 million in backing from groups such as Mitsubishi, Shell, JetBlue Ventures, and the U.S. Department of Energy.