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Welcome to Energy 101 with Julie McLelland and Jacob Stiller. Join us on our mission to help raise the world's energy IQ.
0:00 Welcome back to Energy 101. Today we have Aaron Fitzgerald from Mars materials. If he looks familiar, it's because he was on the Energy Tech Nexus. AKA Energy Tech startups podcast and, you know,
0:14 I'm the video guy. I edit everything. So I literally see all these people's faces. I hear their stories and it's so amazing and inspiring. And then, you know, I'm like, I have a podcast now. I
0:25 can like pick up the scraps and be like, come on my show now So once when I listened to the whole hour of you talking to Jason and Nada, it was actually pile, it was just, I was like, this is so
0:37 cool. I love learning about something like so vital that you don't even realize exists. And that's kind of the whole like motif of collide, really, just how important oil and gases and power,
0:47 energy, whatever. But with that said, why don't you kind of explain what it is Mars materials is, what your industry is And, If I switched to the wide angle, you can see there's an experiment
1:02 waiting to go, you know, so we love props on the show. I mean, we all get safety glasses. We do. Safety first. Oh, it shows watching. I'm
1:13 so excited. Yeah. Aaron, kick us out. Yeah. Well, thanks for having me and happy was it Thursday today. So really excited to be here. I'm Aaron Fitzgerald, CEO and co-founder of Mars
1:23 Materials We're based here in Houston, Texas, and our company transforms carbon to clean dirty water. And I like to say, and much more, because we also make products like carbon fiber, which can
1:36 be used to, in our case, to replace materials like steel and aluminum and applications that can have tremendous impact on light weighting for transportation, so thinking about saving fuel economy,
1:50 and then also in the energy infrastructure So you can replace and what's happening in big swaths today are carbon fiber is being used as a replacement and still reinforce conductors. And that helps
2:03 with transmission infrastructure without actually having to do more interconnection. A lot of opportunities, what we're doing. That's awesome. So what, there's, I understand there's a product
2:13 you make. What exactly is that? Yeah, so we are working to create carbon negative chemicals and our target molecule today, target chemical is a14 billion chemical building block called Acrylo
2:30 nitrile. You're welcome to say that 10 times fast if you like, but I think we call it AN for short, but really the name of the molecule is less important than what it does. So there are many
2:44 derivatives for it. Some where Acrylo nitrile is the sole raw material for derivatives are carbon fiber And then also for polymers or pellets. that are used to help with freshwater production. So
2:60 the acrylic nitro market itself is 14 billion dollars and growing about four to five percent per year. And its derivatives, particularly ones where it's the soil raw material, are growing at hyper
3:10 growth speed. Here in the US, we are specifically interested in carbon fiber. The administration's priorities are all around re-shoring critical minerals and materials, and one of those is carbon
3:23 fiber. In the case for carbon fiber, the supply chain, notably acrylic, excuse me, acrylic nitrile, not this, is made from coal, or from crude oil, and the market and the production,
3:35 although started in the US and grown in Europe, has moved to China. So carbon fiber has been dedicated as a critical material for defense,
3:45 and they're looking to re-shore that supply chain. So it comes from, you said, coal, And we let like how? How does that work?
3:55 Yeah. Explain this.
3:58 And what does it look like, is it a? Yeah, so we may, a krillini trail looks like water. It's a clear liquid, but it is a carcinogenic material, so you do not drink it, do not play with it.
4:10 Yeah. Our Mars is all about safety. So the way it works, we've licensed our foundational technology from the US. national lab system Are you familiar with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory?
4:27 So our nation's only applied national lab, their house under the Department of Energy. So they created this technology originally to help really achieve one of the strategic goals of the US, which
4:40 was to reduce the lightweight vehicles so that you can improve the fuel economy. We then took over the technology a few years ago and became their commercial partner, and we've since scaled up the
4:51 technology from bench scale to our full pilot plant. which we house at Shell's Technology Center here in Houston. We have about 1, 300 square feet of processing area. And that just means, like
5:01 when you say you've scaled the technology, you've scaled different ways to use it? It means that we've scaled up our production capacity. So being able to - They're actually producing it. The curl
5:13 and eye trail, yeah. What are you producing it from? Yeah, so we use inputs like capture at CO2, water electricity. We also have some funding to support a sugar space route And then we process
5:26 that through our technology, which is the technical name is called nitrulation. So we're nitrulating these inputs to then get acrylic nitrile.
5:37 But nitrulation is a unique chemistry in that it can make a bunch of nitriles, but the one that's sowed mostly on the market is acrylic nitrile, and it's that14 billion market. Now, that compares
5:46 in contrast to the incumbent route, which has been around for a long time. for 50, 60 years, it's called the Sohio Method, think of Standard Oil of Ohio, that company, right? After they split
5:57 out from the major company, they became smaller, holding or individual companies that I think Rockefeller still held. I made a lot more money off of that. And Standard Oil of Ohio was the company
6:05 that still made fuels, and then they pivoted
6:11 into chemicals. And their really moonshot chemical was a krillonite trial. It had been around for a while, but they had a better mouse trap And nowadays though, that mouse trap needs to change,
6:22 because it's made wholly from crude oil. So you take crude oil or coal, then convert that through naphtha crackers that make propylene. So if you're from the compound propylene, and then propylene
6:34 along with ammonia and oxygen over air gives you a krillonite trial, and then you get some other toxic byproducts. Wow. Yeah. It is a lot. How do you remember all the names of stuff? school.
6:48 Obviously, I know you do this on a daily basis and that's why, but it's a lot to keep up with what all these different things do. It's a lot. Yeah. We don't really focus anymore. We got some
7:01 feedback. We just had a really exciting product validation and we got some feedback from the press around how they talk about chemicals and how you can bring more people into the fold by really
7:11 talking about the impact and what it does versus the base thing Because in our daily lives, we're not thinking about how we get water or how we get energy or what really makes it so that we can
7:23 extend the fuel efficiency of our cars or transportation more generally. Right. Right. So, is there
7:33 besides the way that it's,
7:36 do you call it, produced or made? Yeah. It's in size, produced, manufactured, whatever you
7:41 want to call it Not from oil and gas and coal now, but from your. Our process.
7:47 what else like differentiates like is it also the products you're making that are
7:53 one of my trying to ask maybe like how is it better for the environment and everything. In addition to our sustainability impact which is huge so compared our process compared to the industrial
8:05 incumbent saves 650 of upwards percent on carbon emissions but we also use less water in our process. We don't produce toxic byproducts so the incumbent process makes some more chemicals here a
8:18 hydrogen cyanide for example. Hydrogen cyanide has some technical things that make it challenging with some of the other inputs and from the propylene amoxidation process, the SOHIO process and that
8:33 requires these plants to be cited in very restricted areas, near class four injection shallow injection wells. So there's only a few of those in the US. have been saturated around there, and over
8:47 the years, what they've done is they size up their plants to their max capacity. So we present a new opportunity because our product is impurity-advantaged. We're hydrogen cyanide-free. We don't
8:60 have other impurities that are challenging either to the conversion of our products downstream or to siting. So we can cite our plants in traditional chemical hubs or in other geographies that make
9:12 sense And in addition to that, that impurity advantage does give us some product performance advantages. In addition to demonstrating that we're dropping, it enables the production of higher
9:25 molecular weight polymers. And think of it as like the chains that are bound together, that makes the plastic polymer, the longer you can get that leads to different performance improvements So,
9:41 in the case for carbon fiber, you want very long chains. And we just received our first federal grant from the Department of Navy to actually demonstrate if we could make what would be potentially
9:52 very strong, more strong than the market. So today, carbon fiber. That's awesome. When you have things like that, are you like creating a long piece of, then they're just like, how do they
10:03 test it? And how do they, you know what I mean? Like you're not like fully deploying, but like, how do they, how do you do tests? Yeah, so I think that is one of the challenges and the
10:13 opportunities in scaling up a chemical technology. The timeline to move from what was our bench top system that we used at the National Renewal Energy Laboratory when we were working on our tech
10:27 transfer to our pilot plant, took a couple of years to get off the ground. And now we're still in the process of completing our piloting and collecting the data that we need But to your point, it
10:40 just takes years of work and a lot of discovery. and trial and error and having a great team that's willing to kind of bang their head at the wall until things start to work. Yeah. Yeah. How many
10:54 iterates? This is like kind of on the business side, but I'm just curious. No, please. How many iterations do you have to go through to try to get like, okay, this one, we can actually give to
11:03 them. And when you sign a contract like that, what is they're expecting? Like when are they expecting to see results or like what y'all can do? So our customers, our sample customers are global
11:18 organizations, global manufacturers. And they are, you know, all about business. They don't have a lot of time, but they are driven today by regulatory changes that are requiring them to
11:31 decarbonize and other factors that impact like their cost of capital. So what we have found for us,
11:41 direct off-takers for equivalent nitrile. They're about six different major derivative markets. And then you have maybe three to 10 major players in each of those spaces. So not a huge pool of
11:51 off-takers, but they have long validation processes depending on what you're trying to produce. So we produce the material. We wanna make sure we hit the spec from the start. We deliver it to them.
12:03 They have to devote internal resources to test and qualify it. And then it's a iterative kind of back and forth until it's ready to really be used commercially. And the second piece of that is then
12:17 getting the commercial volumes to deliver on that. Yeah, I'm sure that's tricky. It just takes more capital and more time to scale up. Yeah. So y'all are actually, are you supplying the. Kila
12:30 Metro. Yeah. Are you supplying that and material or just the material? We just supply the acrylonitrile. So our company is focused on making acrylonitrile and then creating a drop-in that can be
12:45 segregated from traditional like fossil supply, or you can blend it in and really create new products, be it just a decarbonized to some degree or fully carbon negative. It depends on the off-taker
13:01 and what their particular goals are But we just deliver them that material, and then they're able to really take advantage of what it means to now have a decarbonized feedstock that performs exactly
13:13 as their other product. Yeah, the other feedstock. Cool. If everything, there are a lot of things that are made out of, you know, things from crude oil and are you kind of like trying to
13:24 replace it with your, with their Krillin nitrile? So, I mean, it's just at the end of the day, it's just a bunch of elements put together Like you can make it in a lab, right? Yeah. So like,
13:37 how do I fathom that like anyone can do this? Like, why, how are you able to make a business out of it? Can someone else just get the formula? Is it, you know, you know where to get that? I
13:47 don't know what these words mean. Like, I don't know what kind of machine to need to put elements together, but I really dumb it down. No, I hear you. No, that's a great question. So we do
13:58 have a global patent that we licensed from NREL That gives us protection to scale up in our exclusive field of use that we have access to. So for us, Acrylonitrile is also used to purify water, to
14:14 create more fresh water. And this is an11 billion market. It's growing at 5 per year. And major drivers of
14:27 it are what's close here to home in Houston, extracting oil. So you need water and liquids and drilling fluids to help there you need it to inject into the wells.
14:35 big issue that we have is in Texas is cyclical droughts. So there's a huge push to find ways to reduce our water usage, fresh water usage. So you use these polymers to help with that.
14:48 And How does it work? Yeah. I mean, I can show you, but, so this is the pellets that were derived from our material. And what we have just overcame, and these pellets are from one of the global
15:02 leaders, a company called SNF. They own 56 of this11 billion market. We overcame a decades-long incumbent barrier set by that Ohio process to demonstrate that our product, and it's first shot. So
15:17 as you mentioned, how do we set that quality control? Can make all 1, 500 plus products of there. So there's about 1, 500 different varieties of these things. Because all water is not the same.
15:29 Different water has different contaminants That's. made from water, or that makes water This is made from our quil and I try and it makes water. Yeah, so I can show you this in a second, I think
15:36 with our demonstration. Okay. But so we make things with a pilot plant. So our plant looks like a,
15:45 we have three reactors that are kind of tubular and then we have heating jackets on the outside of them. We add our inputs, the reactor does its work. And then outside of that, we then have to
15:58 then go through the steps of recovering the crude material and mixture and then purifying it to the customer spec. And then we go through a QAQC process and then we deliver it. And that's really how
16:09 it works in the nutshell. I would say that the running the machine is when we were first getting started new and we had a lot to learn. And now we're using it to collect data so that we can scale up
16:19 to the next one. So this, you said carbon negative earlier. Like you hear that, you hear carbon neutral, net zero, like whatever, like
16:29 I mean, I know what that kind of means. Can you explain like the, maybe the scale of that? What even carbon positive? Like carbon positive would be like oil and gas, right? Industry has
16:39 different views on the language here. So I think what we look at typically is things like your scope one, two, and three emissions. So these are your direct emissions. Usually scope one, you're
16:53 kind of, scope two or more like the emissions associated with energy use. And then scope three are the ones that you need as like inputs for your product and things. Our product and our process has
17:06 negative scope three emissions because we're able to use capture at CO2 and very low process emissions. And that's scope one and two category that then gives us the benefit and the ability to store
17:20 about two units of CO2 per unit of acrylic nitrile that we produce. And then as it gets produced downstream or into different derivatives. depending on where it goes,
17:33 that negativity can carry through, depends on the product, if that answers your question. So then you can use that captured carbon to, like later in the process? So the captured carbon is
17:48 consumed in the upfront part of our process and then we process it into the Acrylonitrile. Got it. Got it. Okay. Yeah. And carbon negative, I guess, ultimately, that's a good thing Yeah. Yeah.
17:59 I mean, you're using carbon. So the core issue with carbon negativity is really the fact that we have a lot of legacy emissions in our atmosphere. So these are emissions that we have just spewed
18:14 out over the last century or so from the industrial revolution, you know, from our cars and everything else So if we were to just fully
18:27 decarbonize today and and figure out a way, we can still extract oil, for example, but our processes had no emissions. We would still have those legacy emissions in the atmosphere. So the carbon
18:40 negative piece is really a signal that you can use those legacy emissions to then leverage those for products or for outputs. And then the target there is to store those legacy emissions and lock
18:55 them away permanently. So you do not have them in the atmosphere and we're then able to reduce the elevated emissions in the air, which is causing all of our climate issues. Right, okay, that
19:08 makes sense. So that carbon fiber is made out of acrylic nitrile, but like what else exists right now that's made out of it? And like how long has it been around? Like what have we made in the
19:22 past? Maybe give like a timeline of like who invented it? I don't know. Um, so it was first synthesized in the 19th century and I'm going to forget the inventors or the name, I'll pull them up in
19:37 that edit here, perfect, sound like German dude what I believe it wasn't really it didn't become an industrial process until around the second or war or two, excuse me And the reason for that was
19:56 we needed more rubber for our vehicles, for the war, and acrylic nitrile makes synthetic rubber so that was his first kind of major application. After the war, there was a, the process for making
20:10 acrylic nitrile was known to be very emissions intensive You know, it was very polluted communities. And so the market itself was limited by its growth by these challenges. The market growth is
20:23 limited by these challenges
20:27 The Ohio Company. recognize there was an opportunity here. And at the same time, there were new applications being derived for a Krilla nitrile. The common marketing term for the major application
20:39 is something called polyacrylonitrile, but we know it as acrylic fibers, for example. So marketers were starting to realize, oh, these fibers are cheaper, and
20:53 they can be used in clothing, and carpets, and other applications. So that became like the super app. That created a lot of demand, and we needed a cheaper way to make it. So then, Ohio came in
21:00 with their process, and then, since then, they've created other derivatives. They found that you could take that
21:07 polyacrylonitrile, stabilize it, and make it higher molecularly in terms of weight. And then, when you bake it at very high temperatures, like 1, 100 degrees C or so, then you get carbon fiber.
21:17 That was another application. They also found that if you combine the acrylonitrile with other chemicals, you can get products like Lego blocks and vacuum parts and keyboard keys. So I tend to
21:28 liken Acrylonitrile and really try to get folks to think about it as we look at the American living room over the last 30 years or so. We've gone from heavy furnitures that, you know, based on
21:41 steel and aluminum and like TVs encased in wood to sleek, lightweight and durable. Underpinning that has been Acrylonitrile. It is the base chemical that's responsible for a lot of that transition
21:56 And it's been the transition material or substitution material for wood and steel-based products. And when we think about our daily lives, our active lives use about our interface with Acrylonitrile
22:07 about 30 to 40 of the day. Our passive lives, if you're thinking about the blankets that you're using and such are about 75. So it's everywhere around you. Wow, it's really like a catch-all like,
22:20 I mean, it's the same thing they say about crude oil. It's like, it's in everything, but so is this stuff Like, yeah, it's like a miracle, basically. Well, and because it's made from crude
22:28 oil, it means that crude oil is truly in everything. Yeah. Is it like
22:35 more similar to like rubber or plastic? It kind of sounds like it like, you know, plastics and everything. And how you bake it. Yeah, so you can make rubber from it or you can make polymer from
22:44 it. And technically this is a polymer, but it's a water-soluble one. So it makes, so this is how we make fresh water. I think folks wouldn't necessarily consider carbon fiber to be a polymer,
22:57 but I think technically it is. It's a textile. So it really depends, I think, on maybe how you squint.
23:06 Is it recyclable? Does it have some nasty, like PFAS levels of whatever plastic has, or is that another advantage? Yeah, so we make a drop-in replacement of curl and nitrile. So when it comes to
23:19 end-of-life and all the things associated with the traditional ways acrylonitrile on the products that are on the market today based on acrylonitrile, we're not necessarily changing any of that. In
23:32 fact, what makes Mars unique, we see ourselves as sitting at the nexus of carbon dioxide removal and industrial decarbonization. So acrylonitrile presents an opportunity to put a lot of capture at
23:44 CO2 into products that are long-term and durable. So you see a lot of those products that I mentioned, like our living room having transitioned, but that also extends to our kitchen and our
23:55 bathrooms So think like your coffee pot, for example, went from like metal to, you know, plastic acrylonitrile, right? So that's going to exist if it came from our process in your home for about
24:06 five to 10, 20 years, I hope, right? And that, an industry perspective is carbon removal. So then you have to worry about the end of life. And there, what we do is our goal is to work with end
24:19 product users and have them really look at they're in the life management plans. And as you know, to the extent that we can as a small company, create incentives for them to really think about
24:33 their end of life management. Okay, why don't we do this experiment real quick? Yeah, so I can show you how we all interact with the krillini trail on a daily basis and we would never know. Okay.
24:46 So what we're gonna do, we just overcame, as I mentioned, this decades long incumbent barrier. And we don't really think about fresh water, but fresh water is ubiquitous in our daily lives. A
24:59 lot of it, most of it goes to agriculture. The other applications then are for industrial applications. So producing chemicals, producing more oil. And then also for our drinking water. So that
25:11 requires, if you think about that, the discharge from a chemical plant is gonna look very different from the discharge from the folks eating a lot of tacos in Houston, right to? making bananas in
25:24 Hawaii. So there are a variety of these products that are used to treat water. So what we're seeing here is something, the common name is called a flocculant, but I don't really want us to get
25:39 focused on the names because they also go by different names, surfactants and other applications depending on what you're using it for. So our curl and nitrile is the sole raw material for this.
25:50 The liquid then gets converted into this solid, these pellets and you're welcome to look at it. Looks like salt. It looks like salt. Does it taste like salt?
26:02 Don't try it, it's a carcinogen. No, that's not. That's cool. Wait, this is going into water to purify it. I was gonna ask that. I was gonna ask if it's - It becomes a cinder, yeah. Yeah,
26:12 I'm like, is this why they are so against microplastics? These polymers, no, 'cause they're water soluble. Then we add a little bit of water and you're gonna get this. So this is a - Yeah. It's
26:23 a gel.
26:25 So you added that to water? Mm-hmm.
26:30 Ooh. Oh, jelly. Oh, I don't know if I drank this, but. What would that be used for? We're about to purify some water. Ooh. Yeah, are you ready? Ooh. All right, we got a little set up.
26:42 Yeah. Action. Science time. So we're gonna show you how we make fresh water. So I've showed you the pellets. And
26:53 just a little bit of water that gets added to a few pellets, and then you're gonna get this gel. And we're gonna use this gel is gonna come in handy. How much water was in that before? So for
27:02 demonstration effect, we like to make it look like magic, but so we put a lot of pellets and water in here. But if you're in industry, you're looking at this to save your cost and to make sure
27:12 that you're coming in exactly what you need. So they have a lot more controlled formulations for it. Got it. So what we have here is just some fresh water And we're going to - and we have a spinner
27:26 here.
27:28 So we're gonna make our water dirty, whoops, just some dirt.
27:34 So this is meant to simulate particulates that are in water. So if you think about water treatment, which, you know, I'm not sure how many of us think about on a daily basis, but water
27:45 treatment's pretty complex. You first, you remove the bulk solids, but think all the wet wipes people flush down. But then there's particulates and there's bacteria. So there's usually some
27:57 chlorine dosing to remove that bacteria, and then you have all these particulates. This is the phase where we remove those particulates. And the material that does that is this flocculin. So now
28:08 we have our dirty water and we're going to add the flocculin. It's a little viscacy, so
28:16 it's always fun to do it live, and we're gonna add a lot more than we typically would in industry. There you go
28:26 Yeah. I think Nickelodeon invented this stuff first. But you can see, it's already happening. So it's now clumping together.
28:37 And it's floculated.
28:40 So keep spinning, but we can also just turn it off and it'll settle. Oh, let me actually spin it a little more.
28:51 Well, I always wanted to see the stirs in action. All the chemist youtubers Yeah. So it's gonna settle. And then as it settles towards the bottom, we'll start seeing the water. Oh, pure for the
29:04 purified water comes to the top. It'll go back like clear. It'll go back clear. It'll be like layered. It'll be layered, yeah. We added a lot more floculent than you would add in industry. So
29:16 it's gonna be, in this particular example, it's gonna be a little more cloudy because of that. Yeah, but as it settles throughout our chat.
29:26 When you get like a finished product and it's layered, you have to extract just the top layer, right? So in an industry at scale, yeah, they have like dewatering tanks and different tanks that
29:33 help to like take
29:37 the water out immediately and then the sludge goes to other areas. So they're not really worried about it just sitting and kind of mixing again. Yeah, I've seen it like Donna at this scale, but
29:47 you're saying that they have the giant. Yeah, so when you are driving near a water treatment plant and you see those huge tanks, right? Yeah, exactly. So, you know, that's this at the very
29:59 small scale. Oh, wow. Yeah. So you can see any more separation now. It's still occurring and most of the clay is now at the bottom and the water is there.
30:14 Oh, sorry for the
30:16 viscosity. Yeah, you have the polymer. That's all right. Do you hear me get some? No
30:24 will it eventually become like a. in clean line.
30:28 It'll continue to flocculate and you'll see the water will just, where the layer of dirt is, the water will just separate out and it'll get clear as we go.
30:39 Beautiful. This is the craziest material. It really is. And
30:43 until Mars, you can only make this material from coal or from crude oil. So our drinking water is literally coming from fossil fuels. And we are now in a position to be the only supplier that can
30:58 make fresh drinking water from the air or from sugars. Yeah. How do you all test if it's like pure? Like if it's, you know what I mean? Like you're drinking that water. How do you make sure?
31:11 Yeah. So I mentioned that there's validation steps along the way. So downstream of the floculant manufacturers. All right. The water treatment plants will use something called jar testing. to
31:24 test really any new product or change to the process to make sure that it hits the rigid standards that are baked into municipal or industrial or agricultural water treatment. So that's all set by a
31:40 lot of law, local, state and national policies and then each and also geographies around the world.
31:50 All right. That's our first science experiment, right?
31:54 Thanks for the experiment. I guess we just cut magically back to this, but we just made some fresh water. Yeah, I may have taken a sip of it off camera.
32:05 So I was listening to you on Jason and Nada's podcast, energy tech startups, and you made this great analogy comparing it to flour and how that's just a great analogy to apply to everyday life. So
32:19 can you kind of sum up everything we've learned so far into that analogy? Yeah, I was experimenting with how to explain acrylic nitrile, so I thought cooking flour would be the best example. And
32:30 then since then, we've really switched to that living room example, 'cause I think it really paints the picture of how we interact with this chemical compound on a daily basis. But when I think
32:42 about that baking flour analogy, or cooking flour analogy, it really goes back to,
32:50 there's
32:52 the all-purpose flowers in the world, and acrylonitrile is kind of like that. The incumbent itself has created this all-purpose flour, and we now have an alternate way to make the same type of
33:07 material, and it has some additional performance advantages that can now, from our perspective, make new types of derivatives it be, in this cooking flour example, maybe new types of cake. or
33:25 cookies or clearly thinking about sugars because I like desserts. You're speaking my language. Are there any, is there anything you're excited about with like in terms of new discoveries and like
33:37 new products or new things that it can like replace or make or anything like that? Yeah, so in our beachhead market, the 11 billion dollar market for fresh water So although we use this to make
33:52 water, if you think about like anything where water interacts, it's very likely a flocculant or polymer is used there. So if you have kids, diapers, the absorbent piece of that diaper, that's
34:05 this material. Yeah, the little jelly when it comes open, yep. You think about paper?
34:13 Have you ever wondered like how does paper like consistently like, you know, bound together, this material here? I've literally never thought about that. Yeah. But.
34:26 I've always just thought about it as like, Why wouldn't it? Does that make sense? No, this is like a slurry of like trees mixed up, right? How do you mix that together? So this material, so
34:36 it's really exciting to see that we can now make all those products without fossil fuels, right? I mean, it's exciting. And then for carbon fiber, there's so much opportunity in this market. So
34:47 it's a4 billion market growing at 11 per year in new applications Carbon fiber itself has really hit some strength limitations. To date, most of the manufacturers are focused on really hitting the
35:02 kind of immediate requirements that are necessary for defense and for aerospace, which are very rigid. But there exists a whole world where you can make carbon fiber stronger And part of that is by
35:17 having a pure material that does not impede its ability to stabilize and that strength that we want. So there's some opportunity there and there's some new products that you can create off of that
35:29 that will have some better performance. That's exciting. Is there something in this room you think that's made out of Acrylonitrile? The carpet that you're walking on. Okay. Let's see. No.
35:43 That's metal. These microphones? Yeah. I think those are metal. Classic. The encasing for your television could likely be Acrylonitrile Right.
35:55 Made from fossil fuels. How about the JJ. Watt bobblehead?
36:01 Maybe. There are some other plastics, like major plastics too. That's the hard hat. Hard hat could be, actually. Mm-hmm. Yeah. There's a lot of carbon fiber, hard hat, or is it right? There
36:12 are other stuff, growingly, for specific applications. Okay. And then you also think about carbon fibers applications and like hydrogen storage, for example.
36:23 And then the CO2 pipelines that we need of the future carbon fiber can be used there. Okay Well, this is the time where I'm gonna pull up a clip So I'm gonna pull up the classic clip from episode
36:34 three of land man. So Bob Brad that will field. Yes Everyone loves it cuz it does it does the argument that everyone loves the shoving everyone's faces and the sad truth is that it's true And I
36:45 think it has there's a funny motif happening here where you're the thing you're talking about is Kind of the same deal where it's like we have a very finite amount of things That are man-made that are
36:56 just literally and everything we have and So we're we're getting ready to go down what I call the black pill road, which is like your nihilistic like Everything's screwed and what's the point going
37:10 wool But I think I have to send an appropriate volume I'll hit play and we'll just get the enjoy the clip that everyone on LinkedIn loves We have a 120-year petroleum-based infrastructure. Our whole
37:24 lives depend on it. And hell, it's in everything. That road we came in on. The wheels don't ever car ever made, including yours. Oh, my gosh. And tennis rackets, lipstick, and refrigerators,
37:35 and antihistamines, pretty much anything plastic, your cell phone case, artificial heart valves, any kind of clothing that's not made with animal or plant fibers, soap, buck and hand lotion,
37:47 garbage bags, fishing boats, you name it, ever fucking thing. And you know what the kicker is? We're gonna run out of it before we find its replacement. It's the thing that's gonna kill us all.
38:01 What she meant to say was, Aaron's gonna save the day.
38:05 So everyone loves that, it's true. It's true. What is your, 'cause I have a
38:11 lot, I have a lot of activism, environmentalist takes, and you know, I'm not like sold to the oil and gas, like I see both sides. What is the actual defense to this? How do you, what do you
38:21 say to the big oil boy who's like, it's like, nah, you can't say anything to this? Well, I mean, I think that, I don't think he said anything wrong, right? I mean, he stated the truth.
38:34 Polymer's plastics are part of our daily lives. There really is no turning back. I don't want to live in the Victorian age.
38:43 I don't want wood, nice wood furniture is nice, but I don't need that in my entire home. There are so many advantages from performance to longevity in terms of your products, to the cost that
38:60 makes polymers, I think a very important piece of our modern life. And Mars's whole thesis is to keep our modern life the way it is, but avoid, I think, the piece that he mentioned, which is we
39:12 will run out of that finite resource and that finite resources is also causing a lot of. devastation, right? Everything from refugee crisis to tipping points to hurricanes. I think we talked about
39:27 you being from New Orleans, right? My climate awakening came in 2007, a couple years after the hurricane where I got to participate in a rebuild trip for an alternate spring break trip. I went to
39:39 Rhodes College and we drove down to New Orleans and we helped a lady named Ms. Jackie and her home still had water in it a couple of years later in the basement, right? She couldn't live in her
39:50 home and I didn't realize really up until then what climate change meant for me, for people who look like me. I come from poverty, people from that same background, how it was going to be
40:04 devastating to people like us. So I took my own small personal steps to do what I could and then really fast forward a decade later after working in politics in the senate for a couple of years
40:15 starting to start up. focus on enterprise sales and B2B solutions, realized that I wanna do more to scale my climate impact and the momentum was there. So I then joined a company that could help
40:32 detect
40:34 really large methane gas leaks over oil and gas fields so that we could make those oil-filled services more efficient, right? How about we stop the leaks because we still need to keep our modern
40:45 lives? What was disappointing, the company was called Chiral Cereal Space, now called Insight M, is that we detected more methane than we were anticipating. So after a couple of years, I was
40:57 inspired and really radicalized to want to do more, to stop extraction full stop. But I don't think that stopping extraction means we need to stop that tomorrow. I think it's a transition and it's
41:08 a transformation. And I hope that Mars, and I see Mars as being at the ground like frontline for that And we have now done some amazing first of a kind things. that I anticipate will accelerate our
41:21 progress in that transformation. Why in Houston? Why is Mars in Houston? Yeah, so we are about six years old, we're a public benefit corporation. And our whole approach is to be as capy
41:34 efficient and agile as we can. And so we started the company in California, we're based in Oakland, California, about two and a half years ago. I moved about two years ago in August, 2023, we
41:47 moved the entire company. And we were part of the Breakthrough Energy Fellows program, which is backed by Bill Gates. And we had two years to do some amazing work, basically move our technology
41:59 from bench to pilot scale and achieve the results that we just did with our product validation.
42:07 Two years and not a lot of time, we're talking about scaling up a chemicals company
42:13 and piloting And we were looking for cheap land. We were looking for expertise. We were looking for a regulatory environment that could fit us. And we ran into some challenges in roadblocks in
42:24 California that encouraged us to look outside of the state. So we did a site selection study, and Texas had the things that we needed. The regulatory environment was completely switched and
42:36 advantageous for a company like ours. In some ways, Texas is like, if you can make money, come on down. Yeah. Right? Yeah, it's very friendly to entrepreneurs. Very friendly. And that's how
42:45 it should be The regulatory environment did not require us to pull permits. We got a strategic collaboration with Shell, and we were able to operate under their existing permitting infrastructure.
42:56 So
43:01 that saved us time. Our build out costs. We've saved about 90 on our build out costs moving here. And then on top of that, the ongoing support, the expertise. We just, I did an article with a
43:12 pure campus company that this technology center, DexMat. Brian Hossen and with Y Texas talking about our relocation from, we moved from California, he moved from Colorado, and really it came down
43:28 to three things. Houston as this unstoppable place for manufacturing scale up is because of the people, the right people. It's the right place from infrastructure to support structures. It's a
43:41 global city. There are over 60 consulates here, right? And then less is the right time. Houston itself is wanting to take charge and lead in the energy transition and without materials, you
43:53 really can't do that. So there's just a, it is the place to be. Hell yeah, there's a clue. Yeah, I'm glad you chose Houston over Austin. I feel like everyone highly under eats Houston, and I
44:06 think it's amazing. I had to adjust to driving everywhere I think I read that 95 of tasks are completed using your car. I have been able, I live in like the Montreal area, so I can get 50, 60
44:19 there. So that's my only, I think, struggle being here. Yeah, I hear that a lot, with it not being like walkable at all. But otherwise, it's an amazing place. The food is incredible. The
44:31 people are incredible. It's coming from Oakland, which is a very diverse city, and then now moving to the most diverse city in the US, it's incredible, right? So it's a great place to be. I go,
44:43 yeah
44:45 I love it, there's like the whole, that's why Austin's the problem. They're all mad at the California people for coming. It's like, you know, not in my backyard, nimbyism with them, but it's
44:56 like, this man's literally like changing the world. What the hell are you doing? Mm-hmm. And he chose the right city in the right state and like you may have an actual great use case of like, you
45:08 know, leaving the powerhouse that is California for Texas for the right reason. Like, that's amazing I love that. I'm glad to be here. Yeah. What are you saying? Last question is why - Second
45:19 and last question. Oh, why did you name it Mars? What's the full name Mars? Mars Mars materials, yeah. Yes, why Mars. So when we started the company in 2019, there were talks from some of
45:29 those folks who have a lot of money about moving to Mars as a Plan in great a is it but, that believe don't I. B
45:39 situ reference 'cause if you look at the Martian atmosphere, it's about 95 CO2 So what are the resources that you're gonna need on Mars? Are there any fresh water? We're gonna need infrastructure
45:49 materials. And our compound can make everything that you need. And then we like to look to the stars, coming from working in remote sensing. I have an affinity for aerospace. So we kind of follow
46:03 through with that. We call our team members, planeteors. And that's not just about like that, planetary exploration. It's also a mod to Captain Planet, if you remember that show. And that's
46:14 that kind of climate activist side. But our pilot lab, we call Cassini. So we're in Space City, right? So it's really exciting. Cassini was NASA spacecraft that surveyed Saturn's moon Titan.
46:27 And when it surveyed it, it found that it rains a Krillin nitrile on Titan. So when you come to Cassini, we like to let people know that we're going to make it
46:35 rain a Krillin nitrile, but safely. I love that. That's so cool. I'm obsessed with space. Yeah. And nothing beats a great name, origin story. Love that. And like, yeah, having it bleed
46:48 through your company and everyone. Yeah. I mean, a little bit of founder will eat that up. He loves that shit. I like whimsy, you know, because we're talking chemistry all the time. You need
46:57 to have a little bit of fun. Yeah.
47:01 Aaron, thanks for coming on Thanks for having me. Please check out his podcast with Energy Tech startups. They are way much better hosts and articulate than I am. We hit all the points, we really
47:14 jumped around, but we're like a fucking dozen episodes in, and I just, you're inherently interesting in doing amazing work. Thank you. Very appreciative. Yes, thank you for coming. Thanks for
47:24 having me, and you all can find us at MarsMaterialstech, and if they're, we're always looking for partners to offload our flocculants for, so that's one area, and then also funders and supporters
47:36 who can help us scale up, so appreciate it.