1.23.24-Japan-Copernic-Catalysts

JACOB GROSE: Hello, everyone. My name is Jacob Grose. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Copernic Catalysts. And I'm here today to tell you about how we're using computation to develop transformational catalysts for ammonia and e-fuels.

There is an enormous opportunity today driven by decarbonization. And that is because there are certain industries that are very difficult to decarbonize-- these include fertilizer and chemicals, shipping and aviation. Luckily, there is a big solution to each of these problems, each of which alone is responsible for about a gigaton of carbon emissions every year.

The solution is with green ammonia and e-fuels. And our projections show that by 2050 the market for these green fuels will grow to the trillions of dollars. Copernic is a platform company selling catalysts that are critical to this decarbonization process. Our first product is an ammonia synthesis catalyst that will lower the temperature and the pressure of the Haber-Bosch ammonia synthesis process, while being a drop-in replacement for the existing catalyst.

This will reduce the CapEx and the OpEx, leading to a lower cost of ammonia production. And going forward, we plan to use our computational engine to approach other e-fuels as well. And this means that we will address markets that in 2025 are $10 billion but will grow to over $400 billion by mid-century.

So the way we develop this new catalyst is with our computational partner Schrodinger. We have worked with Schrodinger to develop novel screening models that allow us to rank new materials in terms of their performance as a catalyst. These models today are based on physics space simulations. But going forward, we intend to expand that to AI and machine learning, as well.

Our catalysts today are made on the gram scale by external partners. And we test them in our high throughput lab near the MIT campus. Going forward, we will scale up our catalyst to the kilogram scale and work with partners to scale up to the ton scale. And we are excited to show the results of our catalyst have been validated experimentally.

If you look at the model data on the left hand side of your screen, you will see that our lead candidate has outperformed the conventional iron catalyst in the models. And in the experiments also, on the right hand side, it will show that they outperformance us 3x the performance of the existing ammonia catalyst. And we were able to achieve these results with only two laboratory scientists and nine months of high throughput experimentation. Making us more than 10 times efficient in catalyst discovery than the industry standard.

I'm very excited to be here today in Japan because Japan has taken a leadership role in terms of the use of ammonia in energy. And this is both for power generation and also for shipping. And many of you will recognize this METI roadmap from the Japanese government. Copernic is working in many of these industries, talking to partners in energy and shipping and also chemicals to figure out how to reduce the cost of ammonia production.

And so we have three goals today for partners for us. The first is to speak with ammonia producers open to testing a new catalyst technology. The second is to speak to end-users, such as shippers, who are interested in reducing the cost of their fuels and fertilizers. And finally, to talk to engineering firms who are looking for better solutions for producing ammonia.

And so if any of you are interested in these topics, please feel free to come to speak with me during the start of event. Thank you.

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