Houston startup unveils sustainable bio-based leather at the rodeo

sustainable materials

Rheom Materials presented its bio-based alternative, Shorai, a 93 percent bio-based leather, at the rodeo and plans to scale it up this year. Photos courtesy Rheom Materials

Last month’s Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo stirred up another rootin’ tootin’ time for Houstonians and beyond.

But before the annual event galloped into the sunset, there were quite a few memorable innovations on display, with one notably coming from Rheom Materials.

The Houston-based pioneer of next-generation materials presented its scalable, bio-based alternative known as Shorai, a 93 percent bio-based leather, through two custom, western-inspired outfits that showed off cowboy flair through a sustainable lens.

“I'm a Houstonian, I love the rodeo,” Megan Beck, Rheom’s business development manager, recalls. “We're sitting there talking about it one day and we're like, ‘Okay, we've got to do something with this leather to show people how good it can look in apparel, how easy it is to wear.’”

Buoyed by the idea that their materials are meant to “change your impact, not your life,” Rheom captured the real-life energy of their bio-leather outfits under the rodeo’s neon lights in a short commercial video and photo shoot with models donning the samples, while dancing and enjoying the festivities. Rheom created a skirt, a leather jacket, and then a leather top for the look.

“Houston is such a vibrant city,” Beck says. “There's so much innovation here. I think the rodeo is just a really, really great example of that. And so we wanted to take this opportunity to take some of these garments out there and go on the slide, go on some of the rides, go into the wine garden and go dancing, because if you've ever felt some of the materials in the market in this space, they're very stiff, you can't really move in them, they're a little fragile, they kind of fall apart.”

Not only do the models in the video look fashionable, but they also look comfortable, and the leather looks natural and supple. And to the naked eye, Shorai appears to be like the leather most wearers are accustomed to.

“What we really wanted to showcase in this is the energy and the movement of the leather, and to show people how good it can look in apparel, and how easy it is to wear, which I think we were able to accomplish,” Beck says.

Next up, Beck says Rheom wants to scale production of Shorai, the Japanese word for “future,” at a competitive price point, while also reducing its carbon footprint by 80 percent when compared to synthetic leather. According to Beck, Rheom plans to see Shorai products come to market sometime this year.

“We have companies globally right now that are testing materials, that are prototyping, that are making garments, making handbags and footwear, and making eyewear because we have a plastic, as well,” Beck says. “So, this year, I do believe we'll start seeing those products actually come to market, which is very, very exciting for us.”

And with their large-scale production partner already set up for Shorai, Rheom plans to start its first production run of the product soon.

“In April, we'll actually be starting our first production run,” Beck says. “We'll be doing it at full scale, full width, and a full run of materials. So over the next five years, we're only going to just try to increase that capacity.”

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This story originally appeared on our sister site, InnovationMap.

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A team led by Matteo Pasquali, director of Rice’s Carbon Hub, has unveiled how carbon nanotube fibers can be a sustainable alternative to materials like steel, copper and aluminum. Photo by Jeff Fitlow/ Courtesy Rice University

Houston researchers reach 'surprising' revelation in materials recycling efforts

keep it clean

Researchers at Rice University have published a study in the journal Carbon that demonstrates how carbon nanotube (CNT) fibers can be fully recycled without any loss in their structure or properties.

The discovery shows that CNT fibers could be used as a sustainable alternative to traditional materials like metals, polymers and the larger, harder-to-recycle carbon fibers, which the team hopes can pave the way for more sustainable and efficient recycling efforts.

“Recycling has long been a challenge in the materials industry — metals recycling is often inefficient and energy intensive, polymers tend to lose their properties after reprocessing and carbon fibers cannot be recycled at all, only downcycled by chopping them up into short pieces,” corresponding author Matteo Pasquali, director of Rice’s Carbon Hub and the A.J. Hartsook Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Materials Science and NanoEngineering and Chemistry, explained in a news release. “As CNT fibers are being scaled up, we asked whether and how these new materials could be recycled in the future .... We expected that recycling would be difficult and would lead to significant loss of properties. Surprisingly, we found that carbon nanotube fibers far exceed the recyclability potential of existing engineered materials, offering a solution to a major environmental issue.”

Rice researchers used a solution-spun CNT fiber that was created by dissolving fiber-grade commercial CNTs in chlorosulfonic acid, according to Rice. Mixing the two fibers led to complete redissolution and no sign of separation of the two source materials into different liquid phases. This redissolved material was spun into a mixed-source recycled fiber that retained the same structure and alignment, which was unprecedented.

Pasquali explained in a video release that the new material has properties that overlap with and could be a replacement for carbon fibers, kevlar, steel, copper and aluminum.

“This preservation of quality means CNT fibers can be used and reused in demanding applications without compromising performance, thus extending their lifecycle and reducing the need for new raw materials,” co-first author Ivan R. Siqueira, a recent doctoral graduate in Rice’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, said in a news release.

Other co-authors of the paper are Rice graduate alumni Oliver Dewey, now of DexMat; Steven Williams; Cedric Ginestra, now of LyondellBasell; Yingru Song, now a postdoctoral fellow at Purdue University; Rice undergraduate alumnus Juan De La Garza, now of Axiom Space; and Geoff Wehmeyer, assistant professor of mechanical engineering.

The research is part of the broader program of the Rice-led Carbon Hub, an initiative to develop a zero-emissions future. The work was also supported by the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Project Agency, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and a number of other organizations.

Pasquali recently led another team of Rice researchers to land a $4.1 million grant to optimize CNT synthesis. The funds came from Rice’s Carbon Hub and The Kavli Foundation. Read more here.

Rheom Materials announced a strategic partnership with Bixby International for the commercial-scale production of its novel biobased material, Shorai. Photo via Rheom

Houston biomaterials startup taps partner for commercial-scale production

next-gen news

A Houston-based next-gen material startup has revealed a new strategic partnership.

Rheom Materials, formerly known as Bucha Bio, has announced a strategic partnership with thermoplastic extrusion and lamination company Bixby International, which is part of Rheom Material’s goal for commercial-scale production of its novel biobased material, Shorai.

Shorai is a biobased leather alternative that meets criteria for many companies wanting to incorporate sustainable materials. Shorai performs like traditional leather, but offers scalable production at a competitive price point. Extruded as a continuous sheet and having more than 92 percent biobased content, Shorai achieves an 80 percent reduction in carbon footprint compared to synthetic leather, according to Rheom.

Rheom, which is backed by Houston-based New Climate Ventures, will be allowing Bixby International to take a minority ownership stake in Rheom Materials, as part of the deal.

“Partnering with Bixby International enables us to harness their extensive expertise in the extrusion industry and its entire supply chain, facilitating the successful scale-up of Shorai production,” Carolina Amin Ferril, CTO at Rheom Materials, says in a news release. “Their highly competitive and adaptable capabilities will allow us to offer more solutions and exceed our customers’ expectations.”

In late 2024, Rheom Materials started its first pilot-scale trial at the Bixby International facilities with the goal to produce Shorai for prototype samples.

"The scope of what we were doing — both on what raw materials we were using and what we were creating just kept expanding and growing," founder Zimri Hinshaw previously told InnovationMap.

Listen to Hinshaw on the Houston Innovators Podcast episode recorded in October:

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, InnovationMap.

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Oxy's $1.3B Texas carbon capture facility on track to launch this year

gearing up

Houston-based Occidental Petroleum is gearing up to start removing CO2 from the atmosphere at its $1.3 billion direct air capture (DAC) project in the Midland-Odessa area.

Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental, said during the company’s recent second-quarter earnings call that the Stratos project — being developed by carbon capture and sequestration subsidiary 1PointFive — is on track to begin capturing CO2 later this year.

“We are immensely proud of the achievements to date and the exceptional record of safety performance as we advance towards commercial startup,” Hollub said of Stratos.

Carbon dioxide captured by Stratos will be stored underground or be used for enhanced oil recovery.

Oxy says Stratos is the world’s largest DAC facility. It’s designed to pull 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air and either store it underground or use it for enhanced oil recovery. Enhanced oil recovery extracts oil from unproductive reservoirs.

Most of the carbon credits that’ll be generated by Stratos through 2030 have already been sold to organizations such as Airbus, AT&T, All Nippon Airways, Amazon, the Houston Astros, the Houston Texans, JPMorgan, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks and TD Bank.

The infrastructure business of investment manager BlackRock has pumped $550 million into Stratos through a joint venture with 1PointFive.

As it gears up to kick off operations at Stratos, Occidental is also in talks with XRG, the energy investment arm of the United Arab Emirates-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., to form a joint venture for the development of a DAC facility in South Texas. Occidental has been awarded up to $650 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to build the South Texas DAC hub.

The South Texas project, to be located on the storied King Ranch, will be close to industrial facilities and energy infrastructure along the Gulf Coast. Initially, the roughly 165-square-mile site is expected to capture 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, with the potential to store up to 3 billion metric tons of CO2 per year.

“We believe that carbon capture and DAC, in particular, will be instrumental in shaping the future energy landscape,” Hollub said.

Fervo Energy selects Baker Hughes to provide supply geothermal tech for power plants

geothermal deal

Houston-based geothermal energy startup Fervo Energy has tapped Houston-based energy technology company Baker Hughes to supply geothermal equipment for five Fervo power plants in Utah.

The equipment will be installed at Fervo’s Cape Station geothermal power project near Milford, Utah. The project’s five second-phase, 60-megawatt plants will generate about 400 megawatts of clean energy for the grid.

Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

“Baker Hughes’ expertise and technology are ideal complements to the ongoing progress at Cape Station, which has been under construction and successfully meeting project milestones for almost two years,” says Tim Latimer, co-founder and CEO of Fervo. “Fervo designed Cape Station to be a flagship development that's scalable, repeatable, and a proof point that geothermal is ready to become a major source of reliable, carbon-free power in the U.S.”

Cape Station is permitted to deliver about two gigawatts of geothermal power. The first phase of the project will supply 100 megawatts of power to the grid beginning in 2026. The second phase is scheduled to come online by 2028.

“Geothermal power is one of several renewable energy sources expanding globally and proving to be a vital contributor to advancing sustainable energy development,” Baker Hughes Chairman and CEO Lorenzo Simonelli says. “By working with a leader like Fervo Energy and leveraging our comprehensive portfolio of technology solutions, we are supporting the scaling of lower-carbon power solutions that are integral to meet growing global energy demand.”

Founded in 2017, Fervo is now a unicorn, meaning its valuation as a private company has surpassed $1 billion. In March, Axios reported Fervo is targeting a $2 billion to $4 billion valuation in an IPO.

Over the course of eight years, Fervo has raised almost $1 billion in capital, including equity and debt financing. This summer, the company secured a $205.5 million round of capital.

Houston-area sustainable steel company emerges from stealth with $17M in VC funding

heavy metals

Conroe-based Hertha Metals, a producer of substantial steel, has hauled in more than $17 million in venture capital from Khosla Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Fellows, Pear VC, Clean Energy Ventures and other investors.

The money has been put toward the construction and the launch of its 1-metric-ton-per-day pilot plant in Conroe, where its breakthrough in steelmaking has been undergoing tests. The company uses a single-step process that it claims is cheaper, more energy-efficient and equally as scalable as conventional steelmaking methods. The plant is fueled by natural gas or hydrogen.

The company, founded in 2022, plans to break ground early next year on a new plant. The facility will be able to produce more than 9,000 metric tons of steel per year.

Hertha said in a news release that its process, which converts low-grade iron ore into molten steel or high-purity iron, “doesn’t just materially lower cost and energy use — it fundamentally expands our capacity to produce iron and steel at scale, by unlocking a wider range of iron ore feedstocks.”

Laureen Meroueh, founder and CEO of Hertha, says the company’s process will fill a gap in U.S. steel production.

“We’re not just reinventing steelmaking; we’re redefining what’s possible in materials, manufacturing, and national resilience,” Meroueh says.

Hertha says it’s in talks with magnet producers — which make permanent magnets and magnetic assemblies from raw materials such as iron — to become a U.S. supplier of high-purity iron. In its next stage of growth, Hertha will aim to operate at a capacity of 500,000 metric tons of steel production per year.

The company won the Department of Energy's Summer Energy Program for Innovation Clusters (EPIC) Startup Pitch Competition last summer. Read more here.

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