Discarded calcium and emitted carbon —
we look at both together.

Why I started this company

I have worked with inorganic and industrial materials since 1993. I developed new products and markets in LG Chem's Industrial Materials Division, and later, through technical sales and running my own companies, turned industrial by-products such as fly ash and blast-furnace slag into materials. Along the way I kept seeing the same picture: on one side, calcium-rich by-products being landfilled; on the other, limestone being mined and imported for the very same calcium.

CARBON-U was founded to connect those two pictures in a single process.

Why we look at waste and CO₂ together

Calcium meets CO₂ and becomes calcium carbonate. Extract calcium from industrial by-products and carbonate it with CO₂ from flue gas, and the waste problem and the carbon problem are handled in the same reaction. CARBON-U's C-PCC technology is designed to drive this reaction without separate CO₂ capture equipment and regardless of CO₂ concentration, and its potential has been confirmed through three years of Regulation-Free Special Zone demonstration since 2021 and production verification at 5 tonnes per day.

Why a materials business

A business that depends on treatment fees rarely lasts. When we can supply materials customers already buy — calcium carbonate and calcium chloride — at the same quality, resource circulation becomes an industry, not a cost. That is why CARBON-U wants to be judged not by “how much we treated” but by “what specification of material we made.”

Why Tongyeong oyster shells

Tongyeong generates 150,000–200,000 tonnes of oyster shells a year, while its recycling facility handles around 80,000 tonnes. Oyster shell is a lump of high-purity calcium carbonate and, at the same time, a problem the region must solve. Because we receive a resource that needs treatment rather than buying feedstock, we judged it the place where our technology could first become a business. In 2026 we moved our carbon-neutral business to Tongyeong, and we will measure quality, yield and cost on oyster shells directly with a 500 t/yr pilot.

How we will expand

We start with oyster shells, but the same process extends to industrial by-products such as steel slag, CBS dust and fly ash. The residue left after extraction can go to construction and fill materials, and further to carbon mineralization and onshore CO₂ storage. Prove it on one feedstock, then extend to the next — that is the Carbon Circularity Platform CARBON-U envisions.

The value we aim to deliver

To companies, low-carbon materials and by-product solutions they can actually use for ESG and carbon neutrality; to governments and local authorities, a demonstration partner that can verify policy goals in the field; to local communities, the experience of waste becoming jobs and industry. We will be clear about what is proven and what is still to be proven, and open each next step with data.