Ocean Supercluster Invests In Halifax Firms Creating ‘Game-Changing’ Biofuel
DARTMOUTH—Several Nova Scotia companies are part of a pan-Canadian team developing new technology to produce renewable biofuel from algae.
Canada’s Ocean Supercluster announced the initiative February 8, calling it the largest project the organization has funded to date.
With a total value of $65-million, the Ocean Supercluster will provide nearly $5.7-million, with the project’s industry and government partners chipping in the rest.
Valent Low-Carbon Technologies—along with partners that include Dartmouth’s Mara Renewables and Clearwater—are just a few of the companies teaming up to make the project happen.
The Clean Ocean Advanced Biofuels Project will create a renewable fuel made from organic material that’s already abundantly available.
At a virtual announcement February 8, Krista Martell of Mara Renewables said it has the potential “to revolutionize the marine transport industry.”
Valent’s Karlis Vasarais claimed the fuel can be used in any existing marine transport engine with no modifications and that it won’t require any new infrastructure.
Greenhouse gas emissions from the liquid fuel are also up to 90 percent less than those of conventional fossil fuels.
Vasarais explained that fuel is a combination of dead organisms and organic matter that, over 50 million years, under a variety of temperatures and pressures, transformed into the fossil fuels we know today.
“Our project’s consortium can create what nature created, except we can skip 50 million years,” Vasarais said.
One of the main ingredients the companies will use to create the biofuel will be waste from pulp and paper mills.
“It will be wood chips and it will be sawdust; it’s agriculture and forestry byproducts. These are feedstocks abundantly available in the Maritimes and across Canada,” Vasarais said.
In a media release, the Ocean Supercluster said the success of the Clean Ocean Advanced Biofuels Project “will drive Canadian renewable diesel production and supply, reduce imports, and foster international market exports.”
It will also create more than 150 jobs.
More information about the Clean Ocean Advanced Biofuels Project is available here.
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