Interview of Prof. Grant Glover, VP of Technology Partnerships, published on the AL Circle Magazine on June 25th, 2025.
Atoco’s VP of Technology Partnerships interview on AL Circle
“We believe transformative technologies such as our solution will help to shift the decarbonization equation in aluminium from a high-cost, high-disruption proposition to a feasible and scalable solution”, Prof. Grant Glover, VP of Technology Partnerships Atoco
ATOCO’s technology is tackling one of aluminium production’s toughest challenges—low-concentration CO₂ capture. What were the key scientific and engineering breakthroughs that enabled your sorbents to work effectively in such a dilute and contaminated gas stream?
Our technology is based on decades of foundational work in reticular chemistry – a field which was invented by our founder Prof. Omar Yaghi in the 1990s. Reticular chemistry is a field of chemistry dedicated to designing and synthesizing crystalline, highly ordered materials by linking molecular building blocks with strong bonds—such as covalent or coordination bonds—to form open, porous frameworks.
The key advantage of reticular materials such as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) or covalent organic frameworks (COFs) include:
– High porosity and internal surface area, offering vast interaction space for gas molecules—up to thousands of square meters per gram.
– Customizable architecture, where metal nodes and organic linkers are tailored to enhance CO₂ affinity and resist chemical degradation.
– Exceptional chemical and thermal stability, enabling operation in humid, acidic, and high-temperature environments without performance loss.
The possibilities for designing and nano-engineering reticular materials are virtually limitless. At Atoco, we specialize in tailoring these advanced materials to meet the unique challenges of low CO₂ concentration environments—such as those found in the aluminium industry—unlocking new potential for effective carbon capture where existing solutions fall short.
Additionally, Prof. Yaghi has used AI to facilitate the materials discovery process, with AI-guided synthesis and screening tools reducing development time and accelerating innovation.
Traditional CCS technologies struggle with aluminium smelting due to low CO₂ concentration and high contaminant levels. Could you elaborate on the unique chemistry and resilience of your sorbents that allow them to bypass pre-treatment steps while maintaining high selectivity and regeneration efficiency?
Absolutely. Our approach uses nano-engineered reticular materials—advanced porous solids with exceptionally high surface area and tailored CO₂ capture sites. These materials are uniquely designed to maintain high selectivity for CO₂ even at ultra-low concentrations, which directly addresses one of the main barriers in aluminium CCS: energy- and cost-inefficiency in dilute streams. (…)