https://environment.yale.edu/news-in-brief/yse-trained-scientists-win-ep…
Air Company, a carbon utilization startup whose scientific leadership team has done pioneering research at the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering (CGCGE) at Yale, received the Environmental Protection Agency’s Green Chemistry Challenge Award for Climate Change. The team was recognized for the development a groundbreaking technology that transforms carbon dioxide captured from industrial plants and hydrogen from water into sustainable aviation fuel, ethanol, and methanol.
The company projects that its Airmade technology, if scaled, could avoid 10.8% of global carbon dioxide emissions, which is the equivalent of more than 4.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually. Its sustainable aviation fuel life cycle CO2 emissions are over 90% lower than traditional jet fuel.
The Air Company team includes co-founders Gregory Constantine and Stafford Sheehan ’13 MS, PhD ’16; Mahlet Garedew; Chi Chen PhD ’16; Pat Ward, and Paul Anastas, director of CGCGE and Teresa and H. John Heinz III Chair in Chemistry for the Environment, who serves as the company’s science advisor. Sheehan and Garedew were both postdoctoral associates at CGCGE. They were honored during an awards ceremony held on October 23, 2023, at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.
“Yale must be proud of producing people like Drs. Sheehan, Chi Chen, and Mahlet Garedew, who have shown you can go from invention to impact so quickly with solutions to such major problems,” Anastas said. “I’m just happy to be part of this team with people who have dedicated their brilliance to making the world better through green chemistry.”