For Ethox Energy co-founder and CEO Maryam Omidvar, years of research into carbon capture eventually led to a simple question: once carbon dioxide is captured, why not put it to use?
That question helped inspire Ethox Energy, a Calgary-based company developing technology that transforms carbon dioxide and methane into low-carbon synthetic fuels.
Last month, Ethox Energy marked an important step in that journey with a technology showcase bringing together industry and engineering partners to see the company’s progress as it moves toward industrial pilot testing.
“This is really a milestone for Ethox Energy,” said Omidvar. “We’ve scaled our technology to a point where we can de-risk the next stage and give industry confidence that it can be used in their systems.”
Ethox’s technology uses captured CO2 as a feedstock to create products that can contribute to lower-carbon fuel production. Its platform can produce synthetic gas that serves as a building block for fuels including methanol, dimethyl ether (DME), diesel alternatives and sustainable aviation fuel.
For Omidvar, the company is a continuation of work she began as a researcher. With a PhD in chemical engineering and years of experience studying CO2 capture and hydrogen purification, she became interested in moving beyond capturing emissions toward finding productive uses for them.
“I spent seven or eight years working on capturing CO2, and then it became: why should we just capture it? Why not utilize it?” she said.
Innovate Calgary became part of Ethox Energy’s journey when Omidvar joined the Innovation Catalyst Grant (ICG), a fellowship supporting science and technology entrepreneurs as they move research and intellectual property toward commercialization.
At the time, Omidvar says Ethox had an idea and intellectual property around its catalyst but needed the resources and space to continue developing the technology. The two-year fellowship allowed her to focus full-time on the company while advancing and scaling the technology through lab work.
“Without that money, without that support, we couldn’t get to this point,” said Omidvar, who also credits the expert advisor support she received through Innovate Calgary as the company navigated commercialization.
After completing the fellowship, Ethox joined Innovate Calgary’s Aerospace Innovation Hub, allowing the company to remain connected to the ecosystem while exploring opportunities for its technology in aviation.
Sustainable aviation fuel is one potential market for Ethox’s technology, and Omidvar sees the hub to continue accessing commercialization expertise while building relationships within the aerospace sector.
With its latest scale-up milestone reached, Ethox is now preparing for an industrial pilot to demonstrate its technology under real-world operating conditions.
From there, the company plans to work with its industry partners toward a first-of-its-kind commercial-scale project.
For a company that began with an idea about finding greater value in captured CO2, the showcase represents another step toward turning that idea into an industrial solution.