To remove CO2 from the atmosphere, this former McGill postdoc's startup looks to biomass

In 2019, while doing post-doctoral research in McGill's Department of Natural Resource Sciences, Qinhong Cai (better known as Tammy) travelled to Nunavut to join the Oceans Protection Plan, a federal initiative designed to improve marine safety and increase the protection and restoration of coastal and seaway ecosystems. Cai, an environmental engineer, was sent to monitor hydrocarbon contaminants and microbial genomics along the Kivalliq transportation corridor. But after Inuit elders told her about the significant changes they’d observed in the region, her heart was pulled in another direction.

“All this work is important,” she told the Toronto Star, “and I really enjoyed doing it. But I realized that all that effort won’t be enough if we can’t stop or mitigate global warming.”

In 2020, while still at McGill, Cai devoted evenings and weekends to developing her own unique direct air capture (DAC) system. While most DAC systems use massive amounts of heat to separate carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, Cai figured out a novel way to use biomass to achieve the same results.

Cai was still validating the tech in the lab and filing for a patent when she founded Gaia Refinery to commercialize her system. The Toronto Star interviewed Cai about the qualities that set Gaia’s system apart, the role DAC must play in our decarbonization efforts and the love she has for the natural world.