By Kimberly Ramkhalawan
March 28, 2023
One Jamaican Youth is looking to pivot a more clean technology all while reaching the UN’s sustainable development goals through creating climate resilient technology. Damani Thomas, CEO of the Carbon Neutral Initiative is the brain child of D30 fuel which looks at providing a cleaner fuel option in Jamaica. He was the focus of the Caribbean Climate Smart Accelerator ASK series, where, Dianne Squirres sat down with him for conversation on his company, which currently works in a number of fields including carbon capturing and clean energy aimed at lowering carbon emissions as well as decarbonizing transport along the path of climate action.
The story behind his coming up with the solution, D30 starts in what he says was driven by his belief in his purpose of always caring for the environment, nature, science and animals, strong dislike toward pollution. At age 21, he realized that he already had two solutions that are good at lowering the impact on the ozone, and made the decision to start up his own company, despite still being in school.
He started working on the defossilization of fuel at age 15, which he came about through watching popular animated series, Tom and Jerry, where they were running around in a nuclear fusion area, and the thought occurred to him of applying fusion and fission in that manner to an energy source that suits Jamaica, as it was not able to use nuclear at anytime soon.
Thomas says he began looking at a solution that was feasible in his home country, and continued along the path of creating the data into a fuel source. He says after multiple tries of attempting to come with a solution, he finally found one that could work.
This transcending into ten years of labour and development, as he currently aged 25. It was during his first year in college, Thomas said he wanted to create another solution aimed at decarbonizing transport directly.
In creating the Carbon attack filter, which is a biodegradable carbon capture filter for passenger cars, he explained what it does was capturing pollutants such as emissions such as carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, sulphur nitric acid, as well as soot. To further boot, how carbon cyclecar it is, that even after the filter is all used up, the waste can be removed and put in soil as it can be put in soil as it has a stable pH and can increase the pH in soil while the chemicals that are harmful to us, is helpful to plants, including nitrogen, carbon, and sulphur are needed as macro nutrients to plants.
But the pivot toward the new fuel was due to the energy crisis faced brough on by the pandemic and European war, and citing the fallout in power around the world, with scheduled blackouts in some countries, despite having oil at their disposal, Thomas says to prevent Jamaica from reaching such a state, he embarked on his drive for the use of biofuels. His ultimate aim, reducing his home country’s budgetary allocation for fuel, along with putting forward a cleaner solution currently had which could reduce emissions along with the added benefit of reduced prices.
Thomas says he envisioned his D30 fuel, to cut fossil fuel dependency and free up a budget for developing the country.
The D30 fuel is a semi-synthetic hydrocarbon fuel designed to be more sustainable than E10. He describes it as still being economical despite it being a bit processed, resulting in a product that is of lower cost, than what is currently on the market.
Comparing current hydrocarbons that do go through the refining catalytic cracking process, he says the D30 process takes ethanol from local renewable resources which is processed into oil alcohols, to which it is then blended with significant less amount of diesel. He describes the ratio as being a minimum blend of 30 to 70 percent ratio. However, tests have been done on even lower amounts, including a 40 percent defossilized material and 60 percent petroleum.
He says the idea was to take this raw ethanol present in Jamaica and process it into something with a higher oil density and into something more stable than ethanol, allowing it to be transported into pipe lines easier as opposed to raw ethanol.
Ethanol is corrosive and cannot be run through the pipes, so must be brought from the methanol plant and then transported into the blending station, where it can be blended at the PetroJAM, the refinery and sent to the service station.
In putting this into dollars and cents perspective through analogy, Thomas says where if the government spent $1M in fuel, it can now spend $700K and still meet the same quota, providing some savings he says can be put to use in developmental projects. With this he hopes that countries can now reduce their dependence on fossil fuels within a period of five to ten years, compared to them doing so with the current infrastructure.
As for concerns over it still having a percentage of emissions, Thomas says it amounts to a much lower carbon footprint than pure fossil fuels, as it carries the same concept as with aviation fuels.
Challenges faced in getting here he says led him into conversations with the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica, PCJ, followed by assistance from the Democratizing Innovation in the Americas, who he says continues to be an enabler behind his company. In the last three years, Thomas says his company has gotten and “exponential support”, where he is now at the Caribbean Climate innovation Centre, who have been guiding the company into developing its business solutions and plans, as well as getting support from the European Technology Chamber and its energy alliance board.
He noted that Inclusive Capitalism and the Founders institute have also come on board on assisting in the last year.
Thomas says an interesting feature of the D30 fuel, was discovering how versatile it was and likened it to John Steinbeck’s story, The Pearl, of not knowing its value of what he created.
Its not only applicable to gasoline, but to aviation fuel, which has led to a current process still in development that allows for improving the current alcohol to jet fuel production process. Thomas says they have been looking at how the D30 can be applied to this, and so far research has shown positive numbers and leads. And with a request from the International Air Transport Association in the UK to come up with an Aviation fuel solution, he says they are currently focused on achieving current goals with fine tuning his products before becoming a viable aviation fuel source.
He remains confident that his company is able to get through with the regulatory processes around the world.
Thomas says his team is currently an active team of four along with a number of mentors in the energy space around the world.
He believes with his country going in this direction, it can give Jamaica atleast $10M in carbon credits.
As for the infrastructure needed for countries to adapt this fuel source, Thomas says any country involved in the manufacture of E10, D30 can be made as well, along with the addition of some fuel storage tanks.
So far, agreements have been secured with PetroJAM, and 876, a logistics company in Jamaica.