SRC is part of a team with four other Innoventures Canada (I-CAN) organizations developing a ground-breaking Carbon Algae Recycling System (CARS). The system will feed waste heat and flue gas containing CO? from industrial exhaust stacks to microalgae growing in artificial ponds.
CARS treats greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions not as a liability that must be disposed, but rather as a valuable feedstock for producing high-demand algae-based commodities. The CARS vision is of large covered ponds being integral parts of industrial facilities/parks, providing emissions sinks, product revenue streams and associated employment.
Algae are versatile building blocks for a range of value-added products. Their fatty oils can be extracted to make biodiesel, while their carbohydrate content can be processed into ethanol and their proteins turned into animal feed or fertilizer.
CARS, which shrinks the typical algal pond’s footprint, is scalable according to the size of the CO? emitter. For example, a 400 hectare CARS system is designed to use up to 233,000 tonnes of CO? a year, equal to removing 50,000 cars from the road. A typical racetrack-shaped algal pond, taking up the same amount of CO? , would occupy 1,200 hectare.
Along with GHG offset credits, CARS implementers may also qualify for credits for SOx and NOx emission reductions, since algae can also absorb those toxins. Converting algal biomass also leaves a smaller environmental footprint than converting many other biofuel sources.
Phase 1
In Phase 1, the I-CAN team conceived a unique hybrid pond design that weds the best features of existing pond types and can operate year-round under harsh climate conditions. Economic modelling found that selling biodiesel made from harvesting algae could nearly cover the system’s costs.
CARS provides biofuels without competing for food feedstocks, while occupying a much smaller footprint than that of land-based biofuels. Canola produces roughly one tonne of oil per hectare, whereas algae in CARS are anticipated to produce 149 tonnes per hectare (assuming 33 wt% oil at low algae productivity of 30g/m2/day in each of three 30-cm-deep layers; this algae strain was found in Phase I). This algae strain will out-produce oil-bearing land plants on a 149 times smaller footprint.
Phase 2
CARS is entering a second phase that involves constructing a lab-scale demonstration facility to continue proving the concept and the system’s initial design.
More information
Phase 1 Results Summary
