Global Stewardship

Helix Carbon's electrolyzer turns the CO2 in a blast furnace's raw exhaust back into carbon monoxide, which is fed back into the furnace to reduce iron ore, cutting how much coke the furnace burns. CEO David Brown says the design can handle the full exhaust stream without purification. The company proposes starting by replacing 33% of coke, which it says saves $14 per ton of iron, and plans to sell to specialty chemical makers first to bring in revenue sooner. It pitched in Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt.

Brazil's Amazonas state recorded 1,679 fires in the first two weeks of October, up 253% from the same period last year, according to the country's Amazon surveillance system, Reuters reports. At least 36 municipalities declared emergencies, outdoor events in Manaus were cancelled, and public schools there closed on Wednesday. Environment Minister João Paulo Capobianco, who flew over the area, said fires do not start on their own in the Amazon biome and blamed deliberate action, possibly to clear forest. Scientists point to an El Niño forecast to be among the strongest on record, and to climate change, for rains that have been slow to arrive.

Ambrosia Energy has begun work on a 150,000-square-foot, 10 gigawatt-hour battery factory near Austin, enough, CEO Ben Longmier said at TechCrunch Disrupt, to build about a 300 MW power plant a year. Full production is two to three years out. The startup, from the founders of satellite company Swarm, aims to power data centers with solar and batteries at $100 per megawatt-hour. Its first commercial plant in West Texas is planned to pair 300 MW of solar with 660 MWh of batteries to deliver 30 MW around the clock, targeting 99.3% uptime.

Flox Intelligence, founded by Sara Nozkova after 13 years in transportation and autonomous vehicles, sells pole-mounted devices that detect animals and respond with species-specific signals that vary so animals don't habituate, plus software for clients and regulators. About 150 devices are live in North America, Europe and Australia at airfields, rail and road corridors, parks and substations, and train maker Alstom is an OEM partner. The article cites FAA estimates of $272 million a year in US aviation wildlife-strike costs and SNCF figures of more than 8,000 French trains affected by animals annually.

Colossal Biosciences announced GenoMorph, an AI platform that combines 3D skull measurements, comparative genomics and developmental data to predict which genes could be edited when ancient DNA is scarce. The company is using it for its dodo project, where it has one genome to work with versus about 100 for the woolly mammoth. CEO Ben Lamm said the model was trained on developmental data from chickens, quail, ducks and pigeons and skull data from more than 70 bird species, and took more than a year to build.