A member of the 2021 TechStars Kansas City Accelerator just cut a pilot deal to put a commercial version of its air purifying system in the Allegheny Airport. They also moved production of their home units to western Pennsylvania, and their headquarters to Pittsburgh.
Dan Fucich, CTO and Kelsey Abernathy, CEO
“We realized (at TechStars Kansas City) that our real vision for the company was scaling this technology to clean larger volumes of air,” CEO Kelsey Abernathy told bizblip. As for the move? “We made that decision based on two big things: one is manufacturing. We’re looking to manufacture as much of our product in the United States as possible. And the second was ecosystem. The Pittsburgh ecosystem understands hardware companies, has a lot of expertise and great people in that area.”
AlgenAir makes a natural air purifying system using algae to reduce CO2, and sells it as a subscription service. CTO Dan Fucich tells bizblip that the home unit is equivalent to 25 house plants, and that the system they’re trying out in the airport is much bigger.
“This presents us with the opportunity to build a unit that is equivalent to 5000 plants,” Fucich said. “And do it on a scale that we previously weren’t able to so that we can reduce more carbon dioxide and create more oxygen than we ever have.”
The commercial unit is in place at the Allegheny County Airport as part of the airport authority’s innovation program, called xBridge.
Cole Wolfson, xBridge director
“XBridge is designed to do proofs-of-concept and pilots with early stage technology companies in order to understand and assess the potential of various early stage technologies,” director Cole Wolfson told bizblip. “Here in Pittsburgh we’re building a new $1.5 billion terminal and one of the major strategic thrusts of that terminal is sustainability and healthy green spaces. So it made a lot of sense to work with AlgenAir to see what a commercially scaled version of their technology looked like so we could determine if it has a place in the next version of the airport.”
AlgenAir was founded in May, 2021 in Baltimore — skipped to Kansas City from June through September — then back to Baltimore, only to land in Pittsburgh this January. It has two full time employees.
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