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Today we’re looking at a startup that’s starting to get a lot of people talking.

Have they found the solution to building a sustainable business model around carbon capture… by capturing valuable industrial gases too?

Read on to find out all about UAP (Universal Atmosphere Processing).

And also on a carbon tip:

• Carbon13 announced this week that it has invested in seven more UK and EU climate tech startups.

• You can find out more about Carbon13 in our interview with Sara Jones, from June this year

– Martin

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UAP wants to pull valuable resources out of the air—and make carbon capture more viable

Industrial gases are a substantial market, with noble gases being particularly critical to the production of components in electrical devices.

However, scarcity of some of these gases, combined with geopolitical instability, threatens continued supply.

But what if you could grab more noble gases out of the atmosphere? That’s what UAP (Universal Atmosphere Processing) is working on achieving. The startup is developing what it calls an “Atmospheric Processor”.

“We can process separate and capture full spectrum atmospheric gases. That means we can capture valuable noble gases in atmospheric air,” explains founder Brendan Cornthwaite.

“We can also capture dangerous greenhouse gases as well, things like CO2,” he adds.

So in practice, this is atmospheric carbon capture, but capturing far more than just carbon, which he says should make the whole process more viable long term than traditional approaches.

“Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is vitally important for the health of our planet but a lot of traditional carbon capture technologies aren't profitable. They’re concentrating on one molecule, whereas we designed and are building a system that can extract full value from atmospheric air,” Cornthwaite says.

“It's a refinery for the atmosphere. We can take off multiple molecules, some more valuable than others, meaning that we can create economic and environmental value.”

The story so far

Cornthwaite says he left school at 16, and after his desire for a professional rugby career didn’t pan out, he got an apprenticeship at Heysham nuclear power plant on the Lancashire coast.

This introduced him to engineering in the energy industry, where he spent 10 years maintaining and optimising systems in nuclear power plants. Eventually, he wanted something new and left the industry to “find himself”.

Then, Cornthwaite says, he woke up one day with an idea that would form the basis of the patents UAP is in the process of registering around the world.

“I’d spent years working with high-energy systems, pressure, and processes—along with an innate ability to absorb information—,I've realised as I get older. And one night, everything I’d learned suddenly fell into place. I leapt out of bed, grabbed a notebook, and began sketching what would become the first Electromagnetic Plasma Separator, or EMPS,” he says.

“Designing technology is one challenge; building a company around it is another. I had to learn both in parallel — how to translate a late-night sketch into something that could exist in the world, and how to build the structure, partnerships, and credibility to bring it to life.

“That night marked the beginning of UAP. It was a moment, I believe, when years of experience and curiosity converged into a single, clear vision.”

In the three years since, he’s been busy building up backing for the idea.

This has included support from CERN to co-develop sensor technology for the Atmospheric Processor. He has also received a ‘Black Hole Visionary Award’ from the UK Space Agency’s accelerator programme, while UAP has been named a top-50 finalist in the Slush conference’s startup competition this year.

A mark-one version of the technology is currently being developed at the University of Lancashire in Preston, and Cornthwaite says they should have the data they need early next year to allow them to move on to mark-two.

Cornthwaite is busy building out a solid team to build UAP into a business that will be based across the North West of England, with an HQ in Manchester and a development centre at Sci-Tech Daresbury near Warrington.

As the technology matures, the plan is to work directly with the existing industrial gas companies to help the startup distribute the products.

“We want to create regional supply and domestic security for these very rare and valuable products,” Cornthwaite says.

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