Low Carbon Bio + Synthetic Fuels

Wastewater treatment pilot and scale up

THE PROBLEM

The impact of rising water temperatures and increased nutrient runoff are worsening devastating algae blooms. Municipal, industrial, and agricultural wastewater dischargers are struggling to address these effects and meet tightening regulatory limits due to a lack of cost effective and sustainable solutions. Existing technologies are costly, increase energy and chemical consumption, and elevate GHG emissions. The wastewater industry spends about $5 billion annually on upgrades to reduce harmful nutrient discharges.

THE SOLUTION

Revolutionizing wastewater treatment with algae to create clean water and sustainable biofuels.

The same algae that produce the harmful blooms in nutrient-rich waters present a unique opportunity to efficiently harvest the nutrients from effluents, while photosynthetically producing an energy-rich biomass that captures atmospheric CO2 and can be converted to biofuels.

CICE funding will support Algafilm’s development of a novel algae biofilm technology that intensifies algae productivity, reducing the required treatment system footprint by a factor of four or more, while maintaining lowest in class treatment costs. This combination of a smaller footprint and lower cost has the potential to  transform wastewater treatment plants into energy–positive, carbon–negative resource management centers, helping municipal and industrial operations move to a net zero future.

PROJECT STATUS
Active
PROJECT CATEGORY
Low Carbon Bio + Synthetic Fuels
FUNDING RECIPIENT
AlgaFilm Technologies Inc.
CICE FUNDING AMOUNT
$528,000
PROJECT VALUE
$1,056,000
  • "This project represents Algafilm’s first field demonstration in the wastewater sector, and is enabling us to validate the Algae Forest’s effectiveness and efficiency in a real world demonstration as well as to support the scaling up of our technology and manufacturing capacity beyond pilot scale to commercial scale. BC CICE’s support has enabled us to attract project and financial partners accelerating our growth in the wastewater market, and allowing us to explore the biofuel potential of our biomass years ahead of when it would otherwise be possible."
    Ahren Britton, Director, Algafilm Technologies Ltd. DISCOVER ALGAFILM TECHNOLOGIES