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A Richland-based company is developing technology with “world-changing implications,” and a Tri-Cities native is at the helm.
Todd Brix is co-founder and chief executive officer of OCOchem, a carbon conversion startup with a lab in Energy Northwest’s Applied Process Engineering Laboratory.
A former Microsoft general manager and partner, Brix grew up in Kennewick, attending Kennewick High School before going onto earn a chemical engineering degree from the University of Washington and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
His company is developing technology that converts carbon dioxide into value-added chemicals, such as formic acid and formates.
Those chemicals are used in all sorts of products, from deicing airplanes to preserving alfalfa and hay.
While they’re conventionally made using fossil fuel-based hydrocarbons, OCOchem’s technology – which uses CO2, electricity and water – means that no longer has to be the case.
“Industry, energy and agricultural producers can purchase formic and formates made using OCOchem’s technology to reduce the carbon intensity of everyday products from feed and fibers to fuels and fertilizers — at the same or lower cost as similar products made from petrochemicals,” a company statement said.
And, Brix added in an interview, “one of the big applications we’re looking at right now is using formic acid as a way of transporting and storing green hydrogen, because you can decompose or break down formic acid to yield green hydrogen. We think that will have world-changing implications.”
A former Microsoft general manager and partner, Todd Brix grew up in Kennewick, attending Kennewick High School before going onto earn a chemical engineering degree from the University of Washington and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
| Courtesy Todd BrixThe company raised $5 million in seed funding from investors led by TO VC, a decarbonization-focused venture capital fund.
Other investors included INPEX Corp., the LCY Lee Family Office and MIH Capital Management.
The money will allow OCOchem to scale up its technology to industrial proportions and build a pilot plant.
“Using OCOchem technology and clean electricity, we can now do what plants and trees have been able to do for billions of years – convert CO2 and water into useful organic molecules using clean energy. But unlike photosynthesis, we can do it faster and more efficiently at a lower cost, using much less land,” Brix said.
The company has been building to this point since it formed in 2020. It will take about a year for the pilot plant to be ready, Brix estimated, noting that OCOchem expects to hire about five to 10 more staff members in the coming months, in addition to its current roster of about 12 employees.
Joshua Phitoussi, managing partner of lead investor TO VC, said his company is proud to be partnering with OCOchem.
“We’re incredibly excited about the new industrial paradigm that is being opened by electrochemistry thanks to the relentless drop in cost of renewable energy. Finally, we can create a circular carbon economy, where recycled CO2 becomes the easier and most cost-effective feedstock to produce a myriad of chemicals that are crucial to the world economy,” he said in a statement. “OCOchem is at the forefront of that transition, reframing the thinking around CO2 and producing something vital from it. As a first product, green formic acid is a very interesting molecule given its diverse use applications in existing agriculture and industrial markets, but also in future CO2 and hydrogen storage as well as transportation markets.”
Shigeru Tode of INPEX Corporation, another investor, added in a statement that, “OCOchem’s technology enables the conversion of water and carbon dioxide into formic acid, which is stable under ambient conditions. The formic acid can also be converted to useful carbon and hydrogen components with minimal energy input. This is quite important as the world can leverage its existing global-scale liquid distribution infrastructure to move carbon dioxide and hydrogen as chemically-bonded liquids at ambient temperature and pressure, ensuring a safer and more cost-effective approach.”
INPEX is the largest oil and gas exploration, development and production company in Japan, and it may work with OCOchem to transport CO2 and clean hydrogen.
Brix said it’s an exciting time for his company, which will reduce carbon emissions and reliance on fossil fuels while turning CO2 into something useful.
And the Tri-Cities is the right place for that work, he said.
It has a large workforce with the right kind of expertise and experience, plus growing excitement around clean energy.
“The Tri-Cities is really the heart of a lot of new clean energy and clean industrial production in the region. We think it’s a great place to be because of that focus,” Brix said.
Learn more: www.ocochem.com.
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