Smaller industries are carbon capture-challenged

While big industries are looking towards Power-to-X as a solution to their CO2 emissions, there are no real feasible technologies available today that allow small and mid-sized companies to capture and reuse their carbon.

The potential in Power-to-X is massive, but it also requires large amounts of CO2, room for installations, as well as substantial funds – leaving smaller industries like biogas and fermentation plants with an unfulfilled demand to exploit their biogenic CO2 side stream.

From CO2 to food – powered by light

The Danish start-up company, Algiecel, has developed a technology with the potential to make it both easy and profitable to remove and reuse CO2.
The solution is a super-compact and efficient so-called photo-bioreactor, which can transform industrial CO2 emissions into profitable side streams such as biomass and microalgae oil. The biomass can be included as an ingredient in animal feed as well as human food, and the microalgae oil can be used in cosmetics. The photo-bioreactor utilises CO2 emissions continuously and transforms it into microalgae biomass using LED light via photosynthesis while only taking up the space of a standard 40´shipping container. And with reusable oxygen and process heat as the only side streams.

Clean air and a greener food industry

The market potential for the use of microalgae biomass and oil in the food and feed sector is enormous. Global markets for alternative protein in food, food supplements, and animal feed are expected to reach 536 billion EUR by 2030.
When scaling the new technology, Algiecel can contribute to the development of a more climate-friendly food industry using nature’s own biological processes – and at the same time upcycling biogenic CO2 into an additional side stream for the CO2 supplier.