About Carbotura
What is Carbotura?
Carbotura is an Advanced Circular Manufacturing (ACM) company. Its plants take in unsorted manufacturing feedstock, the material communities and companies send to landfill today, and convert about 100% of it into manufactured outputs: Circular Materials such as synthetic graphite, graphene compounds and recovered minerals, plus net-positive ultrapure water. Plants are deployed under Design for Manufacturability (DFM), as factory-manufactured ACM Modular Production Units (ACM modules), replicated for capacity.
Is Carbotura a waste-to-energy company?
No. Waste-to-energy plants burn material and sell the electricity. Carbotura burns nothing: the Recyclotron™ reactor is nitrogen-blanketed and oxygen-free, and the energy a plant makes runs the plant itself. Its products are materials and water.
Is it incineration, pyrolysis or gasification?
No to all three. Incineration burns material in air. Pyrolysis and gasification break large molecules into smaller molecules, such as oils, chars and syngas. Carbotura performs primary elemental dissociation: no polymer or input molecule survives, and new materials are synthesized from the elements.
Is the technology proven?
Every technology in an ACM module is established and commercial-grade, with prior industrial-scale use. The innovation is how they are integrated. Each module is then assembled, integration-tested and certified by the Authorized Systems Integrator (ASI) before it operates on site.
The technology, step by step →
Where is the first plant?
York County, Pennsylvania, under an executed 30-year Circular Supply Agreement (CSA).
How the agreement works for a community →
The process and what it makes
What does a Carbotura plant make?
Circular Materials, including synthetic graphite, graphene compounds and recovered minerals, plus net-positive ultrapure water. About 90% of output is sold and about 10% is used inside the plant to power it. A standard plant does not sell power, electricity or hydrogen.
What materials can a plant take?
Unsorted material: municipal material, wastewater sludge, tires, ash from coal and waste-to-energy plants, construction fluff, contaminated recycling, biomaterial and auto shredder residue. Nothing needs to be sorted first. Pregenesis™ prepares the feedstock by size reduction, magnetic ferrous separation and Liquifact™ extraction, and Exogenesis™ conditions material mined from legacy landfills so it can enter the same process.
What happens to PFAS?
Incineration does not eliminate PFAS; it is carried out in the flue gas and the ash. In a Carbotura plant the feedstock is resolved to its elements, so the carbon-fluorine arrangement that makes a PFAS molecule no longer exists, and downstream processing of both the vapor and solids streams at 1,800–3,000°C fully breaks it down.
What happens to PFAS, in full →
Does the plant have a smokestack or discharge water?
No. There is no stack and no atmospheric exhaust point: the Atmospheric Processing System keeps the plant under negative pressure and returns process gases to the process. Water runs in a closed loop with no process outfall, and the plant produces more ultrapure water than it uses. The plant is designed for near-zero emissions and near-zero residual.
Is a Carbotura plant classified as manufacturing?
Each plant is designed as a manufacturing plant: its inputs are manufacturing feedstock and its outputs are manufactured products. It is designed for manufacturing classification (NAICS 31–33); confirmation of that classification is actively pursued, and neither party’s commitment under the CSA depends on it.
For communities
How does the money work for a community?
Under a Circular Supply Agreement (CSA), the Feedstock Provider pays a Beneficiation Fee (TMC Fee, the Total Material Conversion Fee) at the published range of $100–$150 per ton, escalating 2.5% a year, and receives a Circular Royalty™ of $120–$180 per ton in Year 1, rising every year after. They are separate payments. The fee is invoiced monthly in arrears; the royalty begins 13 months after Carbotura receives the first Beneficiation Fee payment and is paid on every ton delivered.
How the Circular Royalty™ is calculated →
Does Carbotura buy our material?
No. Ownership of the material, and liability for it, transfers to Carbotura under the CSA at collection or delivery. Carbotura pays the Circular Royalty™ on every ton delivered, and the Feedstock Provider pays the Beneficiation Fee. The two are independent payments.
Does the community pay for the plant?
No. Carbotura finances, manufactures and deploys, owns and operates each plant. The community supplies feedstock under the CSA and makes no capital outlay.
How does a community get started?
Ask for a Community Engagement Briefing. From there the path runs from an LOI or MOU, to a Term Sheet, to the CSA.
Deployment and reliability
How long does a deployment take?
12 to 24 months from permit issuance to commercial operation. A standard 400 tons-per-day deployment is four 100 TPD ACM modules, manufactured to one production specification and delivered to the site, where they are integrated.
Why it is manufactured, not constructed →
What happens if a module needs repair?
A plant is not one machine. Every module passes Factory Acceptance Testing within its 2.5% manufacturing tolerance before it ships, and the Authorized Systems Integrator (ASI) is the one accountable party for its warranty and performance guarantees. Every module is made to the same specification, so the fleet uses one set of spares and a repair is a module swap. The building’s installed N+1 line-capacity architecture carries its named throughput while a module is out.
Reliability, uptime and insurability →
How is a plant insured?
Frames and modules are designed to be insured as serialized manufactured assets under property and equipment-breakdown cover, each with its production record and acceptance-test data. Performance risk sits with the ASI’s guarantee and warranty. Carrier terms and coverage limits are shared one-on-one in diligence.
Looking for a definition? Every term on this page is in the glossary. For anything else, contact the team.