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The High-Stakes Quest to Reinvent Cement · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. You know it's amazing cement. Cement doesn't burn or
0:26
Speaker 1: rust or rot. Cement lasts for thousands of years. See
0:31
Speaker 1: Roman aqueducts, Mayan temples, and you can use cement to
0:35
Speaker 1: build almost anything. Cement is so amazing that every year
0:40
Speaker 1: humanity makes four billion metric tons of it. That is roughly,
0:45
Speaker 1: very roughly a thousand pounds of cement for every man,
0:49
Speaker 1: woman and child on planet Earth every year. Now, for
0:53
Speaker 1: the bad news, making cement is wildly, almost absurdly carbon intensive.
1:00
Speaker 1: We don't hear so much about this. Cement is generally
1:03
Speaker 1: not what we talk about when we talk about climate change.
1:06
Speaker 1: But in order to solve climate change, we're going to
1:10
Speaker 1: have to figure out a better way to make cement.
1:19
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem, the
1:21
Speaker 1: show where I talk to people who are trying to
1:23
Speaker 1: make technological progress. My guest today is Leah Ellis. She's
1:28
Speaker 1: the co founder and CEO of Sublime Systems. Lea's problem
1:32
Speaker 1: is this, how can you make cement without emitting carbon dioxide?
1:37
Speaker 1: Before she got into cement, Lea was in grad school
1:40
Speaker 1: working on lithium ion batteries, and as happens to a
1:44
Speaker 1: lot of grad students. She had this kind of deflating
1:47
Speaker 1: conversation with her advisor.
1:51
Speaker 2: One of my last you know, walk and talks with
1:53
Speaker 2: my PhD supervisor is like, you know, what's next in batteries?
1:58
Speaker 2: And he was like, oh, it'll take you know, tens
2:01
Speaker 2: of thousands of people ten years to get to the
2:04
Speaker 2: next level.
2:05
Speaker 3: But I was like, oh.
2:06
Speaker 2: Damn, Like I don't want to be like one of
2:09
Speaker 2: ten thousand people working for ten years.
2:12
Speaker 1: So you realize that you sort of missed the kind
2:17
Speaker 1: of innovation glory days for batteries perhaps, So what do
2:20
Speaker 1: you do?
2:21
Speaker 2: Well? I wanted to continue working with inventors, so I
2:25
Speaker 2: got a Canadian government fellowship to go anywhere work with anyone,
2:29
Speaker 2: and I chose to come to Mit to work with
2:33
Speaker 2: Professor Yetmingchek. And it was actually Yet's idea to work
2:36
Speaker 2: on cement. And it wouldn't have been something that I
2:39
Speaker 2: would have ever had the audacity to jump fields like that.
2:46
Speaker 1: So how did that idea come up?
2:49
Speaker 2: Well, so Yet a year before, in twenty seventeen, had
2:53
Speaker 2: spun out Form Energy, which is a long duration energy
2:56
Speaker 2: storage company, and he had his eye on these trends,
3:00
Speaker 2: you know, renewable electricity is becoming the cheapest form of electricity,
3:03
Speaker 2: especially if it's intermittent, and you know, the utility sector
3:07
Speaker 2: being thirty percent of house gas emissions, like, thought's going
3:11
Speaker 2: to go to zero if we'ever going to achieve net zero,
3:14
Speaker 2: and then you know what what would happen as a
3:16
Speaker 2: consequence of that is that you have all of this
3:19
Speaker 2: renewable capacity that then you then you can use to
3:22
Speaker 2: decarbonise the next largest tranches of emissions, so cement and
3:26
Speaker 2: steel being each about eight percent of global CO two emissions.
3:31
Speaker 2: The thinking was like, you know, how do you decarbonise
3:33
Speaker 2: cement assuming you are in a world with abundant and
3:37
Speaker 2: relatively cheap renewable electrons.
3:39
Speaker 1: So super top down, super like macro big picture, not like, oh,
3:43
Speaker 1: I've got this little technical idea, how can we build
3:46
Speaker 1: it up? But it's like, Okay, I'm I'm looking at
3:48
Speaker 1: the whole planet for the next thirty years, and I
3:52
Speaker 1: see that like making steel and cement is like a
3:56
Speaker 1: problem we have to solve, and we're gonna have a
3:58
Speaker 1: lot of intermittent clean energy.
4:00
Speaker 3: What do you got exactly?
4:02
Speaker 1: And so he mentioned cement to you, what do you
4:05
Speaker 1: know about cement. When he mentioned cement.
4:09
Speaker 2: Well, I assume that cement and concrete were the same thing.
4:12
Speaker 2: I mean, that was my level of understanding at the time.
4:15
Speaker 2: But I did know that cement was, you know, a
4:19
Speaker 2: much larger tranch of COTO emissions than you know, lithium
4:25
Speaker 2: ion batteries could ever address.
4:27
Speaker 1: And so just to be clear, when you say you
4:29
Speaker 1: assume that cement and concrete were the same, you're saying
4:33
Speaker 1: you didn't know anything. Because that's one that's always been
4:35
Speaker 1: hard for me. I memorized it in preparing for this interview.
4:38
Speaker 1: It's one thing I'll definitely get out of this AMA.
4:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know sometimes I get those two words
4:43
Speaker 2: mixed up even now.
4:45
Speaker 1: So what's the difference just for everybody?
4:47
Speaker 2: So, cement is the glue, it's rock glue, and concrete
4:51
Speaker 2: is the glue plus aggregate. So cement is the glue
4:55
Speaker 2: that holds the rocks together to meet concrete.
4:57
Speaker 1: Right, So all the things around us are built out
5:00
Speaker 1: of concrete, and cement is sort of the essential ingredient
5:04
Speaker 1: in concrete.
5:05
Speaker 2: That's right, It's about fifteen percent of the concrete.
5:09
Speaker 1: How do you start learning about cement?
5:11
Speaker 2: Well, I first started on Wikipedia. It's one of my
5:15
Speaker 2: favorite always to spend time.
5:17
Speaker 3: So it was quite delightful.
5:20
Speaker 2: And from Wikipedia, you know, spent a lot of time
5:23
Speaker 2: at the library, you know, in textbooks and then going
5:28
Speaker 2: from textbooks to research articles and.
5:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been really really fun.
5:36
Speaker 2: Honestly, lithium ion batteries are art cool and magical, but
5:40
Speaker 2: cement is is awesome. I think if you're a material scientist,
5:43
Speaker 2: if you're a nerd, there's like a very deep and
5:46
Speaker 2: exciting rabbit hole that you can go down to you
5:48
Speaker 2: once you start getting stoked about cement.
5:50
Speaker 1: Well, let's get stoked about cement. So first of all,
5:53
Speaker 1: it's extraordinarily ubiquitous, right, like so ubiquitous you don't even
6:01
Speaker 1: notice it. I was actually listening to an interview with
6:03
Speaker 1: you a couple of weeks ago, and I happened to
6:06
Speaker 1: be at the airport, and I realized as I was listening,
6:09
Speaker 1: like I was of course standing on on cement on
6:13
Speaker 1: concrete right on the sidewalk, but also there were like
6:16
Speaker 1: I was it was like two decks, you know, arrivals
6:19
Speaker 1: and departures, and so there were these like columns made
6:22
Speaker 1: out of concrete, and then there was concrete over my head.
6:26
Speaker 1: So I was essentially like encased in cement in concrete
6:31
Speaker 1: as I was listening to it. So that was good.
6:33
Speaker 1: That was that was getting me in the right in
6:35
Speaker 1: the right mood for this interview.
6:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, once you see it, you really can't unsee it,
6:41
Speaker 2: and it's it's really fun. And as I've gotten into
6:44
Speaker 2: cement chemistry and durability and testing every sort of feature
6:48
Speaker 2: in the cement you look at you can see weathering,
6:50
Speaker 2: you can see freeze thought damage, you can see alkali
6:54
Speaker 2: silica reaction, you can see rebark corrosion, and it really
6:57
Speaker 2: makes uh, you know, a walk down the concrete jungle
7:00
Speaker 2: a little bit more intellectually stimulating than it was before.
7:05
Speaker 1: So certainly there's a lot of it. Certainly it's important.
7:09
Speaker 1: And so let's talk about how cement is made today.
7:12
Speaker 1: This is not what you're doing, but sort of the
7:15
Speaker 1: thing you're trying to improve upon. Right, Portland cement is
7:19
Speaker 1: this phrase that it's basically a technique for making cement. Right,
7:23
Speaker 1: it's a product, but it's also a way of making
7:25
Speaker 1: the product that's been around for what more than one
7:27
Speaker 1: hundred years? So briefly, what is Portland cement? How do
7:32
Speaker 1: you make it? What do you start with.
7:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, Portland cement is a specific formulation of cement that
7:37
Speaker 2: has been around one hundred and ninety nine years. So
7:40
Speaker 2: Portland cement will celebrate its two hundredth birthday this year
7:45
Speaker 2: on October fourth.
7:46
Speaker 3: That's two hundred years since, and.
7:47
Speaker 1: You're trying to make sure it doesn't make it to
7:49
Speaker 1: two hundred.
7:50
Speaker 3: And fifty, right, exactly. Yeah.
7:55
Speaker 2: So the way Portland cement is made, you take limestone
7:58
Speaker 2: as the calcium source, and then you will also need
8:01
Speaker 2: the right ratios of calcium to silica, alumina and iron.
8:06
Speaker 2: So that Portland cement recipe is about getting those ratios right.
8:10
Speaker 2: But the dominant ingredient is limestone.
8:13
Speaker 1: So limestone is the key ingredient. The thing we want
8:15
Speaker 1: in the limestone is the calcium. But is the calcium
8:21
Speaker 1: bound with carbon? Is that our fundamental problem?
8:23
Speaker 3: That's right.
8:24
Speaker 2: So the limestone is a calcium oxide bound to CO
8:28
Speaker 2: two and those are chemically bound very strongly, which makes
8:32
Speaker 2: the calcium inert.
8:34
Speaker 1: And the process of making cement is you want to
8:37
Speaker 1: essentially isolate the calcium, I mean, among other things, but
8:40
Speaker 1: a key piece of the process is that, right.
8:42
Speaker 3: Yeah.
8:42
Speaker 1: Okay, So in making Portland cement, how does that.
8:45
Speaker 2: Happen by heating it to the point where that bond
8:49
Speaker 2: breaks and CO two, you know, goes as a gas
8:53
Speaker 2: and then you get this solid solid gas separation where
8:57
Speaker 2: you have solid calcium oxide and gashous CO two.
9:01
Speaker 1: Okay, And so then that CO two just goes off
9:04
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere, go often to the chimney.
9:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's mixed with the combustion emissions and goes into
9:09
Speaker 2: the air.
9:10
Speaker 1: Okay. So it's just it's just more carbon emissions. It's bad.
9:13
Speaker 1: It's the thing we're trying to get rid of on
9:16
Speaker 1: the planet.
9:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Mean it's causing global warming.
9:20
Speaker 1: Okay. So you've broken down the limestone and emitted a
9:24
Speaker 1: bunch of CO two in so doing, but you're not
9:28
Speaker 1: done yet, right, what has to happen next.
9:30
Speaker 2: So once that's broken down, it's heated further to fourteen
9:34
Speaker 2: hundred degrees celsius.
9:36
Speaker 1: So it's getting wildly hot. I mean, is the rock
9:39
Speaker 1: actually like melting? Does it look lava ish if you
9:42
Speaker 1: look at it?
9:42
Speaker 3: Yeah?
9:43
Speaker 2: And I actually have had the distinct privilege of looking
9:47
Speaker 2: down the center of a Portland cement kiln. There there's
9:50
Speaker 2: like a tiny hole under the fuel injection port, you
9:53
Speaker 2: put on a welding mask. It's of course extremely hot,
9:58
Speaker 2: and you can peer down and see the rotary kiln going.
10:02
Speaker 2: You can see the flame coming right over your head
10:05
Speaker 2: through that fuel injection port, and you can see the
10:07
Speaker 2: molten rock rolling towards you, like red red, glowing hot.
10:12
Speaker 1: And so so, in addition to the carbon dioxide emitted
10:18
Speaker 1: directly from the limestone in the first stage, presumably people
10:24
Speaker 1: are burning a lot of fossil fuels in order to
10:27
Speaker 1: make this rock lava hot in this stage, thereby emitting
10:33
Speaker 1: more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
10:35
Speaker 3: That's right.
10:35
Speaker 2: And so besides, every Portland cement kiln you're going to see,
10:40
Speaker 2: you know, a small hill of coal, and it's normally
10:44
Speaker 2: bitchumen is coal, though there's often a blend of fuels
10:47
Speaker 2: used to heat up the kiln to this enormous temperature.
10:51
Speaker 2: But bitchumen is cool. Is what's necessary to get this
10:55
Speaker 2: like highly luminous flame that creates the ideal temperatures.
11:01
Speaker 1: So you're not only burning fossil fuels, you're burning coal,
11:03
Speaker 1: which is a particularly dirty, particularly carbon intensive fossil fuel.
11:09
Speaker 3: That's right.
11:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, And we make a ton of cement, so like cement.
11:13
Speaker 1: It's like very carbon intensive, emits a lot of carbon
11:17
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere, and we need it, and we make
11:21
Speaker 1: literally what order of magnitude how many tons?
11:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, about four billion tons a year.
11:27
Speaker 1: Four billion tons a year. And so overall, when you
11:32
Speaker 1: take it all together, what percent of human carbon emissions
11:38
Speaker 1: are from making cement?
11:43
Speaker 2: So it's eight percent of global CO two missions from cement.
11:46
Speaker 1: This is a big problem, and we don't know how
11:48
Speaker 1: to fix.
11:48
Speaker 3: It, that's right.
11:49
Speaker 2: So there are incremental approaches that chip away at the problem,
11:53
Speaker 2: like using alternative fuels. You can swap out some of
11:56
Speaker 2: the coal with natural gas or with burning tires. You
12:01
Speaker 2: can use supplementary sumuntitious materials, so some antigious materials that
12:06
Speaker 2: are less performant, you can blend them in up to
12:09
Speaker 2: thirty even up to fifty percent to to you know,
12:13
Speaker 2: reduce the emissions. But getting to zero is very difficult,
12:18
Speaker 2: if not impossible, with things that are exist today.
12:22
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that, right you You are not
12:25
Speaker 1: going for an incremental gain here, you're saying, okay, let's
12:30
Speaker 1: start from zero and let's figure out a whole new
12:32
Speaker 1: way to make cement that doesn't emit any carbon dioxide
12:36
Speaker 1: and you decide that instead of using coal, you're gonna
12:40
Speaker 1: use electricity, right.
12:42
Speaker 3: That's right.
12:43
Speaker 2: So being battery scientists and electric chemists, you know, we've
12:48
Speaker 2: got the hammer and everything looks like a nail, right,
12:50
Speaker 2: so we can's electricity, but we wanted to look beyond it.
12:55
Speaker 2: Just the most obvious way, which is like to use
12:58
Speaker 2: an electric kiln for heating, that's got as challenges. I
13:02
Speaker 2: mean that one's the obvious way. If it was easy,
13:04
Speaker 2: people would already have done it. There's various challenges with
13:07
Speaker 2: efficiency and material so we had to find another path.
13:11
Speaker 2: And what we derived after many brainstorming sessions and investigating
13:16
Speaker 2: different options, was this way of breaking down the minerals
13:21
Speaker 2: using electric chemistry instead of using heat. So by bypassing
13:26
Speaker 2: the heating also allowed us to be more amenable with
13:30
Speaker 2: the use of intermittent renewable electricity, because of course heating
13:35
Speaker 2: requires base load electricity. It takes days to heat up
13:38
Speaker 2: a kiln to those high temperatures, and so it doesn't
13:43
Speaker 2: allow you to be rampable, it doesn't allow you to
13:46
Speaker 2: be load following.
13:47
Speaker 1: Right, because that a regional kind of marching orders. The
13:51
Speaker 1: original big idea was like we're going to have extraordinary
13:54
Speaker 1: abundance of renewable energy, but for a while at least,
13:59
Speaker 1: it's going to be intermittent. The sun's going to shine,
14:01
Speaker 1: then the sun's going to go down, and so you
14:03
Speaker 1: you don't want to build a system that requires constant
14:07
Speaker 1: high inputs of power over days and days, because that
14:09
Speaker 1: doesn't fit the kind of worldview you're building for.
14:12
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that's right. But also you can get a
14:14
Speaker 2: cost advantage. You can get the cheapest electricity if you
14:17
Speaker 2: can take it whenever it's available.
14:20
Speaker 1: So okay, so go on.
14:22
Speaker 2: The next thing you do is technoeconomic modeling. So start modeling,
14:26
Speaker 2: like what does it cost to do this, what are
14:28
Speaker 2: the inputs, what are the outputs, what's the you know,
14:33
Speaker 2: what's the capex, what's the opax, what's the labor, et cetera.
14:37
Speaker 2: Getting quotes from vendors for specific pieces of equipment, getting
14:41
Speaker 2: actual data from the pilot using actual numbers, and so
14:46
Speaker 2: now it's like this, you know, multi tab quilt sized spreadsheete.
14:52
Speaker 2: But getting that going was the first step, because you know,
14:55
Speaker 2: that's what allows you to pivot quickly to see the
14:59
Speaker 2: weaknesses of your approach. And we continue doing that, and
15:02
Speaker 2: we still continue to do that to refine different elements
15:06
Speaker 2: of our process.
15:09
Speaker 1: This process Leah is talking about, it's a whole new
15:12
Speaker 1: way of making cement. It doesn't involve heat at all,
15:16
Speaker 1: and Lea hopes it will be this turning point in
15:20
Speaker 1: the millennia long history of the way human beings make cement.
15:25
Speaker 1: In a minute, she explains how it works. So you've
15:37
Speaker 1: come up with this new process. You're still refining it,
15:40
Speaker 1: trying to make it more efficient, reliable, whatever, But how
15:44
Speaker 1: does it work?
15:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, Basically we're breaking down the inert minerals using chemistry
15:51
Speaker 2: and electric chemistry instead of using heat. So you know,
15:55
Speaker 2: the heart of our system, or maybe call it the lungs,
15:59
Speaker 2: is this electrochemical reactor that takes neutral pach water and
16:04
Speaker 2: splits it.
16:04
Speaker 3: Into acid and base.
16:06
Speaker 2: So there's a pH gradient that forms between the two
16:09
Speaker 2: electrodes and that's used to dissolve calcium and other minerals
16:15
Speaker 2: from rocks. So actually the electrochemical process we use since
16:20
Speaker 2: we're digesting the rocks instead of cooking them, we don't
16:23
Speaker 2: have to use limestone, so we're using calcium silicate minerals
16:28
Speaker 2: and industrial wastes and basically taking the rock and then
16:34
Speaker 2: splitting it into its mineral components, drying all those off
16:37
Speaker 2: into free flowing powders, and then reassembling a cement powder
16:42
Speaker 2: with the right ratios of all of these elements to
16:46
Speaker 2: make a high performance cement.
16:49
Speaker 1: And so you basically use electricity to turn water a
16:56
Speaker 1: va of water into a place where like part of
16:59
Speaker 1: the water is somewhat acidic and part of the water
17:02
Speaker 1: is somewhat basic. And then you put the rocks into
17:05
Speaker 1: that water, and the acidic parts of the water do
17:08
Speaker 1: some of the words, and the basic parts of the
17:10
Speaker 1: water do some of the work, and you're wet, and
17:12
Speaker 1: you wind up with the minerals you need at a
17:14
Speaker 1: price you can afford.
17:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. You said it very well, So I.
17:18
Speaker 1: Know you start with the idea, and I've heard you
17:23
Speaker 1: say that. Initially you made one gram of cement, which
17:27
Speaker 1: is like you described it as like the size of
17:29
Speaker 1: an almond, which is particularly amazing given how heavy and
17:32
Speaker 1: big cement is. And then you did a kilogram. Where
17:35
Speaker 1: are you now?
17:37
Speaker 2: We came out of stealth about a year ago after
17:39
Speaker 2: we built our pilot plant, which was initially sized to
17:42
Speaker 2: produce one hundred tons a year. In the past year,
17:46
Speaker 2: We've had about seven thousand hours of uptime. We've scaled
17:51
Speaker 2: it up to two hundred and fifty tons per year.
17:54
Speaker 2: We've produced tons of cement and have ran it continuously
17:58
Speaker 2: under dozens of conditions to you know, optimize it.
18:02
Speaker 1: And that cement you've produced is it is it out
18:07
Speaker 1: in the world. Is it just like practice cement? Is
18:09
Speaker 1: it real cement? You know, holding up a building somewhere
18:11
Speaker 1: or something?
18:12
Speaker 2: It is actually holding up a building somewhere. So we
18:14
Speaker 2: did our first field poor about two weeks ago.
18:19
Speaker 1: Oh congratulations, Yeah, I like that. For field poor. Where
18:22
Speaker 1: was the field poor?
18:23
Speaker 2: It was in the Boston area and a piece of
18:25
Speaker 2: in a in a commercial construction project. It was going
18:28
Speaker 2: underneath the construction. It's typically what's called called a mud slab.
18:33
Speaker 3: So yeah, so.
18:35
Speaker 1: That's what you're doing. Now, what have you not figured
18:39
Speaker 1: out yet? Like, what has to happen for you to
18:42
Speaker 1: get from here to being a real business selling lots
18:47
Speaker 1: of cement whatever all over the world or whatever for
18:51
Speaker 1: you to be a real business, for you to be
18:52
Speaker 1: a real business with revenue and your cement just you
18:56
Speaker 1: want your cubmit to be boring, right, you want your
18:58
Speaker 1: to be just like whatever boring again.
19:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, there are certain things we figured out. We
19:06
Speaker 2: figured out the product, we figured out the pros us.
19:09
Speaker 2: But where we are today is still Even though I'm
19:12
Speaker 2: so proud of taking this from a gram to two
19:14
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty tons in four years, it's still a
19:18
Speaker 2: drop in the ocean. I mean, we affectionately call our
19:21
Speaker 2: pilot plant this cement plant for ants.
19:25
Speaker 3: It has to be at least three times.
19:26
Speaker 2: Bigger than this, but we have to get to a
19:29
Speaker 2: million tons per year.
19:31
Speaker 3: We're going to compete on cost with.
19:32
Speaker 2: Today's Portland cement, and so going from pilot scale to
19:37
Speaker 2: full scale, where full scale for cement is just a
19:41
Speaker 2: titanic colossal size, our next step is to build a
19:46
Speaker 2: minimum viable commercial scale plant. So we refer to this
19:50
Speaker 2: as our kiloton plant. We have a site secured in
19:54
Speaker 2: Holy Oak, Massachusetts, on the site of an old paper mill,
19:58
Speaker 2: which we are in the process of removing this ancient
20:02
Speaker 2: paper mill, but all the remnants of what makes this
20:05
Speaker 2: a really exciting industrial.
20:09
Speaker 3: Site still exists. So a hydro electric.
20:11
Speaker 2: Dam, ready, access to rail, ready access to a workforce,
20:17
Speaker 2: you know, industrial permits exist and so our next our
20:22
Speaker 2: next step is to wrap up the pilot phase in
20:25
Speaker 2: the coming months, do do the engineering and start procuring
20:31
Speaker 2: long lead equipment so that we can start building our plant.
20:35
Speaker 2: And so that is the work that you know, my
20:37
Speaker 2: colleagues in the office are busy doing right now.
20:41
Speaker 1: So these are very like practical heavy industry, could be
20:46
Speaker 1: any kind of a big factory concerns. Do you still
20:52
Speaker 1: have engineering or technical problems to solve as well, or
20:56
Speaker 1: do you feel like you've got it down?
20:59
Speaker 2: Well both, I do feel like I've got it down.
21:02
Speaker 2: I'd say, you know, the problems never stop and also
21:06
Speaker 2: the improvements never stop. So in the spirit of swift
21:10
Speaker 2: and massive, we move as quickly as we can to
21:12
Speaker 2: move from one one degree of scale to the next.
21:16
Speaker 2: But there's you know, I have to say, I have
21:18
Speaker 2: the distinct privilege of working with some of the smartest
21:21
Speaker 2: people I have ever met in my entire life, and
21:23
Speaker 2: I've had the pleasure of working with smart people all
21:27
Speaker 2: throughout my education and career. But you know, we're generating
21:32
Speaker 2: quite a lot of IP, We're generating quite a lot
21:34
Speaker 2: of improvements. There's so many improvements that we're planning to
21:38
Speaker 2: feather in over time as we develop the system that
21:41
Speaker 2: I think will replace Portland cement in the next one
21:43
Speaker 2: hundred years.
21:45
Speaker 1: And in terms of cost, I mean, obviously cost must
21:51
Speaker 1: be to a very large degree of function of scale.
21:53
Speaker 1: And you're scaling up at scale. Are you already cost competitive?
22:00
Speaker 1: Do you have to find new efficiencies? I mean presumably
22:03
Speaker 1: this is like a brutal commodity business.
22:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally brutal.
22:08
Speaker 2: And so we can get very close to competing on
22:12
Speaker 2: costs with Portland cement, no carrots, no sticks, at scale
22:18
Speaker 2: with six sons of kilawad hour electricity. So not even
22:22
Speaker 2: using funny math, so using what we think are you know,
22:27
Speaker 2: realistic assumptions, so you know, but we're still far out
22:31
Speaker 2: from a megaton plant. But what we can say with
22:35
Speaker 2: total confidence is that we will be cheaper than Portland
22:38
Speaker 2: cement plus post combustion carbon capture, which is presently the
22:42
Speaker 2: only other way to get to zero for cement making.
22:46
Speaker 2: So every time you take a Portland cement kiln million
22:50
Speaker 2: tons per year, you add post combustion carbon capture, you
22:54
Speaker 2: add some other process. You're always adding capex to that
22:57
Speaker 2: Portland cement plant and opex. And I think the wonderful
23:00
Speaker 2: thing about Sublime, which is our unique advantage, is that
23:03
Speaker 2: we're not adding onto the kilm, we're replacing the kilm.
23:06
Speaker 2: We're not capture, we're not storage, we're carbon avoidance, and
23:10
Speaker 2: that ultimately is much cheaper than capture and storage because
23:14
Speaker 2: you're not adding onto the system.
23:18
Speaker 1: What are some reasons it might not work?
23:24
Speaker 2: You know, it might There are one thousand ways to die,
23:28
Speaker 2: maybe even more, and I like to keep my eyes
23:32
Speaker 2: open to all of them. And we do quite a
23:36
Speaker 2: lot of risk registered development. We have like what we
23:40
Speaker 2: call our three a M list quarterly, I get, you know,
23:43
Speaker 2: everyone anyone in the.
23:45
Speaker 3: Like what keeps you as you.
23:47
Speaker 1: Worry about when you wake up at three in the morning. Yeah,
23:49
Speaker 1: what's at the top of that list right now?
23:53
Speaker 3: If changes day to day. So I'm glad you said
23:55
Speaker 3: right now.
23:56
Speaker 2: I mean, like, as we go into this process of
23:59
Speaker 2: going from pilot to first commercial, I think about cost
24:04
Speaker 2: overruns and this this isn't just you know.
24:08
Speaker 1: Just like building a factory, totally classic.
24:12
Speaker 2: And you know, hiring I'd love to hire someone who's
24:15
Speaker 2: done this before because I think this is where you
24:17
Speaker 2: really need someone who's done this before, because it's not
24:21
Speaker 2: just the cost of the thing.
24:22
Speaker 3: I mean, we think.
24:23
Speaker 2: We've got that lockdown with solid research, solid quotes, just timeline.
24:27
Speaker 2: You know, imagine like you're missing like some widget and
24:30
Speaker 2: you find out this little dinky piece is like I'm
24:33
Speaker 2: gonna show up a year later than everything else, and
24:35
Speaker 2: your companies, you know, you've got your burn rate of
24:38
Speaker 2: the whole company.
24:39
Speaker 3: So that's that's just one way to die.
24:42
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it's a classic. That is a classic
24:45
Speaker 1: way to die.
24:46
Speaker 2: Yea running out of money. Your heart stops beating it,
24:51
Speaker 2: you know.
24:53
Speaker 1: So that's the sad story. There is some happy story
24:59
Speaker 1: where it works and you build a factory and you
25:02
Speaker 1: start selling cement, clean cement. Like if you go I
25:11
Speaker 1: don't know, say ten years into the future, what does
25:13
Speaker 1: the world look like if it's the happy story.
25:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I may go more than ten years in
25:18
Speaker 2: the future, and I maybe go one hundred years in
25:20
Speaker 2: the future. I like to think about a post carbon world,
25:23
Speaker 2: like what does it look like when you know, you know,
25:27
Speaker 2: you're penalized for your CO two emissions the same way
25:30
Speaker 2: you're penalized for you know, mercury emissions or something like that.
25:34
Speaker 3: And you know, I like to think that if we're successful.
25:38
Speaker 2: The most wildly successful version of Sublime Systems is that
25:42
Speaker 2: We've changed the way humans make cement the same way
25:46
Speaker 2: you know, Romans changed the way we made cement, same
25:49
Speaker 2: way the British and French with Portland cement changed the
25:53
Speaker 2: world way we made cement. I think, you know, humbly, cautiously, optimistically,
25:58
Speaker 2: what Sublime is doing could change the way humans make
26:01
Speaker 2: cement forever. And I think that's really exciting because it's
26:06
Speaker 2: it's such a monumental thing. Like when you go to
26:09
Speaker 2: when you go to Egypt, you see, you know, construction,
26:13
Speaker 2: things that were made to last, you know, you go
26:15
Speaker 2: see the aqueducts, you go see things, and these things
26:19
Speaker 2: that were built are a testament and a monument to
26:23
Speaker 2: the values of the people that created them. And so
26:26
Speaker 2: I think, you know, you know, the coolest thing for
26:29
Speaker 2: me is to have like enduring significant buildings that are
26:34
Speaker 2: made with you know, the cement of the future and
26:36
Speaker 2: having like archaeologists one thousand and two thousand years from
26:40
Speaker 2: now looking back and being like, oh, there was this
26:43
Speaker 2: period before where the world was a certain way, and
26:46
Speaker 2: then there was something that happened where co two levels
26:51
Speaker 2: crusted and then they came down and at that point
26:54
Speaker 2: in time, like we can see how their buildings materials
26:57
Speaker 2: change to adapt to that.
26:59
Speaker 3: I think. I think that's pretty cool.
27:00
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't think you can get closer to
27:03
Speaker 2: a monumental legacy than to really change building materials in.
27:07
Speaker 1: That way, the way literal monuments are built. Yeah, we'll
27:16
Speaker 1: be back in a minute with the lightning round. After
27:27
Speaker 1: that big think and we're going to do a small
27:31
Speaker 1: think lightning round to conclude. What's your favorite concrete structure
27:38
Speaker 1: or concrete thing?
27:40
Speaker 2: Oh, you know, it's the things that folks on my
27:44
Speaker 2: teammates so often. You know, we're doing tests on our
27:48
Speaker 2: cement pace, and so we have a bunch of molds
27:50
Speaker 2: of like you know, frogs and dragons and snowmen and
27:54
Speaker 2: whales and turtles and so. I yeah, my favorite concrete
27:58
Speaker 2: things are it's probably the dragon.
28:00
Speaker 3: I like the dragon the most.
28:02
Speaker 1: How big is the dragon?
28:04
Speaker 2: Oh?
28:04
Speaker 3: It fits on the palm of my hand.
28:05
Speaker 2: I sometimes take it with me to conferences, you know,
28:08
Speaker 2: just to meet people.
28:09
Speaker 3: You know, seeing is believing, and so sometimes it travels
28:12
Speaker 3: with me.
28:14
Speaker 1: What's your least favorite concrete thing?
28:21
Speaker 3: I would probably say New York City.
28:23
Speaker 2: Just something about that city just makes me despair. I
28:27
Speaker 2: don't know what it is like just never been a fan.
28:31
Speaker 3: I'm trying.
28:31
Speaker 2: I'm trying to be open minded about New York City,
28:33
Speaker 2: but you know, I fail each time I go.
28:35
Speaker 3: No offense, not my cup of tea.
28:38
Speaker 1: Fair. It's not for everybody. It's for millions of people,
28:41
Speaker 1: but it's not for everybody. So you rode your bike
28:46
Speaker 1: across Africa from north to south. What was the worst
28:50
Speaker 1: day of that trip?
28:56
Speaker 2: You know, there were days when I was extremely sick,
29:01
Speaker 2: so it would probably be.
29:03
Speaker 3: Those days.
29:05
Speaker 1: And you still had to ride. Yeah, often, Yeah, Okay,
29:10
Speaker 1: what was the best day?
29:14
Speaker 3: I mean, every day was the best day, even if
29:16
Speaker 3: I was totally sick.
29:17
Speaker 2: I mean, I like to say that doing that trip
29:20
Speaker 2: across Africa, which was about four months, twelve thousand kilometers,
29:25
Speaker 2: about one hundred kilometers a day on average. I mean,
29:28
Speaker 2: it's something I would recommend both to my best friends
29:31
Speaker 2: and my worst.
29:32
Speaker 3: Enemies, because.
29:35
Speaker 2: I think it does is extremely character building, and you
29:39
Speaker 2: get very comfortable with discomfort, and you know, your pain
29:43
Speaker 2: tolerance gets through the roof. You become extremely physically fit.
29:50
Speaker 2: So yeah, even the good days and the.
29:53
Speaker 3: Bad days, we're all character building.
29:57
Speaker 1: As a chemist or as a material scientist, what do
30:02
Speaker 1: you think you understand about the physical world that most
30:05
Speaker 1: people don't.
30:08
Speaker 3: Well.
30:09
Speaker 2: A lot of people think chemistry is scary. I think
30:12
Speaker 2: people think chemicals are scary. I think chemistry is one
30:17
Speaker 2: of the most fascinating things you can do. Is like
30:20
Speaker 2: turning one form of matter into another form of matter
30:24
Speaker 2: by blending them together and heating them up and pressurizing them. Yeah.
30:30
Speaker 2: I'm always surprised when people say that they didn't like
30:33
Speaker 2: chemistry or they found it scary in high school.
30:36
Speaker 3: To me, it's just pure magic.
30:41
Speaker 1: I'm going to run my first marathon this year. I
30:44
Speaker 1: know you have run many marathons. What's one piece of
30:48
Speaker 1: advice you would give me?
30:51
Speaker 3: Don't walk.
30:51
Speaker 2: Once you start walking, like, you'll never be able to
30:54
Speaker 2: run again.
30:55
Speaker 3: So even if you're you think you're if you're faced.
30:58
Speaker 2: With a hill, you're like, oh, I could walk up
31:00
Speaker 2: that hill just as fast as I could keep running.
31:02
Speaker 2: Just don't let your body know that walking is an option,
31:05
Speaker 2: because you will end up walking those last five kilometers
31:08
Speaker 2: as I did first time I did the marathon.
31:12
Speaker 1: That is good advice. Is there anything else we should
31:18
Speaker 1: talk about? Did we not talk about anything that we
31:20
Speaker 1: should talk about?
31:25
Speaker 3: You know, I've.
31:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean one thing that I feel strongly about
31:30
Speaker 2: is carbon avoidance, and you know, this need to avoid
31:36
Speaker 2: carbon emissions, and I just believe so much, not only
31:39
Speaker 2: in my own technology, but but in others that are
31:41
Speaker 2: coming out in steel and ammonia and industrial processing.
31:45
Speaker 3: That is about efficiency.
31:47
Speaker 2: It's about doing things smarter and not making things more complicated,
31:53
Speaker 2: and it you know, I love nothing more than like
31:55
Speaker 2: really elegant solutions. I'm biased, but in my biased opinion,
32:01
Speaker 2: Sublime it's one of these elegant solutions that will be
32:04
Speaker 2: obvious in retrospect. And I think it's a very exciting
32:07
Speaker 2: time to be to be technologists, to work at startups,
32:11
Speaker 2: and to really force these new inventions into reality with
32:16
Speaker 2: help from the industry incumbents, which I think are moving
32:20
Speaker 2: faster than an ever before.
32:21
Speaker 3: To create the future. It's a really fun time.
32:28
Speaker 1: Pleiah Ellis is the co founder and CEO of Sublime Systems.
32:36
Speaker 1: Today's show was produced by Gabriel Hunter Cheng. It was
32:39
Speaker 1: edited by Lyddy jeene Kott and engineered by Sarah Bruguier.
32:43
Speaker 1: You can email us at problem at Pushkin dot FM.
32:47
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next week with
32:49
Speaker 1: another episode of what's your problem,