A climate-technology milestone matters when it changes what the team can build, test or understand next. Air View's two Innovate UK Smart Grant programmes created that progression.

2023: air movement and small-scale DAC

In 2023, Air View was part of the Shell StartUp Engine UK programme and was awarded its first Innovate UK Smart Grant. The programme supported development of a scalable direct-air-capture concept, including an innovative air-movement platform and small-scale DAC hardware.

This established the physical capture side of the programme and created the hardware basis for learning about airflow, contact and the practical constraints of a dilute atmospheric CO2 stream.

2025: regeneration became a systems problem

Air View was awarded a second Innovate UK Smart Grant in 2025 to develop a regeneration approach designed to reduce energy requirements for solid-sorbent direct air capture. The work began with a regeneration-chamber challenge and developed into a modular architecture that brings the principal process functions together.

That change in scope is important. A chamber can perform an individual function; a system must manage interfaces, energy, control, material movement and CO2 output as one operating process.

The result is not a presentation of a future machine. It is the pilot system shown on this website.

Gates 1-3: the completed engineering foundation

The completed foundation combines subsystem architecture, end-to-end integration and construction of the pilot system. The platform is accessible, instrumented and reconfigurable so that operating behaviour can guide the next engineering decision.

Air View deliberately does not publish protected component architecture, operating recipes, control logic or unvalidated performance data. The public evidence is the development record and the physical pilot; more detailed claims must follow an appropriate validation process.

Gate 4: site integration and demonstration

The next programme is to take the pilot into a representative operating environment. That requires a host site and definition of utilities, controls, safety, physical interfaces and the intended destination for captured CO2.

Success at this stage is not simply installation. It is a reviewed integration package, commissioning, sustained operating data and independently reviewable measurements. This is where technical partners, demonstration hosts, CO2 destination partners and milestone-aligned investment can create disproportionate value.

Why the sequence matters

Scale should be the consequence of evidence, not a substitute for it. Consolidating the completed work into a pilot foundation makes the next question clearer: what must be proven in a real context before Air View commits to commercial and manufacturing readiness?