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SiC’s adaptive, physics-informed multi-agent engineering platform will be applied to CarbonLume’s patented, light-driven single-step process for converting methane into clean hydrogen and tunable carbon nanotubes, with the goal of shortening engineering timelines, lowering capital intensity, and accelerating time to first production for a new class of decarbonized process plants
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NASHVILLE, Tenn. & KITCHENER, Ontario — SiC Systems, a pioneer in multi-agent AI for process manufacturing, today announced a teaming agreement with CarbonLume Inc., developer of the world’s first patented, light-driven (photocatalytic) methane conversion platform, to advance next-generation plant designs for converting methane into clean hydrogen and tunable carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in a single reaction step. Under the agreement, SiC will apply its adaptive, physics-informed, agent-oriented engineering platform to CarbonLume’s modular photonic reactor architecture, with the aim of delivering faster, lower-cost plant designs and a clearer path to commercial-scale deployment.
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First-of-a-kind industrial plants are rarely held back by chemistry alone. They are held back by engineering — the sequential, labor-intensive work of turning a proven reaction into a designed, sized, permitted, and financeable facility. SiC built its platform to attack that bottleneck directly, organizing specialized, physics- and mathematically-informed agents into adaptive “hives” that reason, simulate, and act across the full engineering workflow. CarbonLume’s technology is a demanding test of that approach: a novel photocatalytic reactor, a modular numbered-up architecture, and two saleable products from one reactor pass.
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The agreement extends SiC’s process-manufacturing strategy into energy-transition and advanced-materials production, alongside the company’s existing work in chemicals and biomanufacturing. As industrial customers across steel, cement, ammonia, advanced materials, and industrial gas look for lower-carbon, lower-capital pathways to hydrogen and high-value carbon materials, SiC intends to use the CarbonLume deployment as a blueprint for how AI-driven engineering automation compresses the cost and schedule of standing up new process plants.
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Applying the SiC Platform
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At the core of SiC’s platform is a multi-agent system capable of conducting exhaustive, physics-informed exploration of plant design configurations. Applied to CarbonLume’s modular, numbered-up photonic reactor architecture, the collaboration is designed to enable:
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- Catalyst- and reactor-informed flowsheet synthesis — SiC’s physics-informed agents will incorporate the operating envelope of CarbonLume’s photoactive catalyst and reactor modules directly into automated flowsheet generation and plant layout optimization.
- Process intensification through exhaustive design exploration — the platform evaluates reactor module count, LED array configuration, and gas-recycle loop design in parallel, identifying intensified plant configurations that maximize methane conversion and CNT/hydrogen yield while minimizing energy consumption.
- Accelerated pre-engineering and basic engineering —SiC’s adaptive agents organize themselves into holarchies, which are cooperative organizations, that will run parallel simulations, reactor and module sizing, and techno-economic and GHG-abatement analyses that today are performed sequentially by engineering teams, targeting a significant reduction in engineering hours for a typical commercial-scale plant.
- Digital twins for real-time control — SiC will build digital twins of CarbonLume’s photonic reactor modules that synchronize with live plant data, enabling predictive control, catalyst-performance monitoring, and autonomous troubleshooting once plants are operational.
- Go-to-market with industrial customers — the companies will jointly engage prospective customers evaluating decarbonized methane conversion for carbon nanotube and hydrogen supply — including industrial gas, materials, and energy-transition customers — for deployment at pilot and commercial scale.
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Commercial Impact and Time-to-Value
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By compressing pre-engineering and design phases, SiC and CarbonLume expect to meaningfully shorten the time to first production for CarbonLume plant deployments compared with conventional, sequential engineering approaches. This acceleration is intended to support:
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- Earlier revenue generation for CarbonLume and its plant customers
- Improved project economics through faster capital recycling for project developers and investors
- Lower engineering cost as a share of total project capital
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Paired with CarbonLume’s single-step, light-driven process — which produces two revenue streams, clean hydrogen and tunable carbon nanotubes, from one reactor pass — the collaboration is designed to unlock:
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- CAPEX reductions from a modular, numbered-up reactor design that avoids the pressure vessels, water balance, and oxygen plant required by steam methane reforming, combined with AI-optimized equipment sizing
- Improved unit economics from co-produced clean hydrogen and carbon nanotubes versus single-product hydrogen pathways
- Lower specific energy consumption relative to conventional CVD and SMR-with-carbon-capture routes
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Statements from Leadership
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“CarbonLume is exactly the kind of partner SiC was built for: a deeply technical team solving a real, physical decarbonization problem at industrial scale. Our multi-agent platform is designed to replace the engineering bottleneck that slows down first-of-a-kind plants with physics-informed agents that reason, simulate, and act in real time. Applying that to CarbonLume’s light-driven methane conversion technology means we can help stand up plants faster, operate them more safely, and prove out a blueprint other process industries can follow.”
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— Christopher Savoie, PhD, JD, Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO, SiC Systems
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“Every hour of engineering we save between concept and first light is runway we give back to the technology. CarbonLume’s reactor turns a waste stream into two products the world needs — clean hydrogen and battery-grade carbon nanotubes — in a single step. Pairing that with SiC’s AI-driven engineering platform lets us take a modular, numbered-up architecture and design, size, and de-risk full-scale plants in a fraction of the time a conventional engineering process would take, which matters enormously for a company our size.”
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