Of the 50 startups on Foresight Canada’s 2024 list of the most investable cleantech startups, half are B.C. companies, six of which are focused on solving environmental and engineering problems for resource industries like mining oil and gas, extractions and petrochemicals.
Some of the companies on the list have developed some novel approaches to industrial processes.
Vancouver’s Rockburst Technologies has developed tech that could offer a truly disruptive approach to mining.
Its carbon dioxide (CO2) pulverization technology eliminates the energy-intensive task of grinding rock at mine sites, and has the added benefit of potentially eliminating the need for water and tailings storage ponds.
“Since 2022, we’re already working with top miners from around the world,” said Rockburst CEO Oscar Malpica. “They’re very, very interested in this technology.”
Typically, in hard rock mining, boulder-sized rocks are first crushed, then the smaller ones ground up into a power—a process known as comminution. Natural Resources Canada estimates that three to four per cent of global electricity use just in comminution.
Rockburst’s CO2 infusion process—invented by Rockburst CTO Cliff Edwards—eliminates the grinding process, and does so with much less energy.
After large boulder sized rocks are crushed into smaller pieces, the smaller rocks and pebbles are placed in a container, which is then pressurized with supercritical CO2—a state between a gas and a liquid.
All rock is porous to some degree at the microscopic level. Under pressure, the supercritical CO2 can make its way inside the rock. When the pressure is released, the CO2 gas inside the rock expands and fractures it into tiny pieces.
It is a closed-loop system, so the CO2 remains inside the containers and does not get released into the atmosphere. Some of the CO2 remains sequestered in the waste ore. And because it is a dry process, it can eliminate the need for the large amounts of water typically used in mining.
“We hit low energy consumption, we also hit potential carbon sequestration, and we also hit no water consumption, which is important in certain parts of the world,” Malpica said.
For the oil and gas sector, Squamish-based Rotoliptic Technologies has developed a new design for specialized pumps used in oil and gas extraction—specifically, progressive cavity pumps, which employ a screw-shaped mechanism to move liquids and gases.
Rotoliptic’s design harnesses principles of geometry and fluid dynamics to increase the flow of fluids and gases by 30 per cent in progressive cavity pumps. They work in temperatures up to 350 degrees Celsius, are 25 to 60 per cent more energy efficient and are resistant to corrosion.
“We can run in corrosive environments somewhat, and we don’t have any heat limitations,” said Harriet Beaumont, Rotoliptic’s funding and sustainability programs manager.
Because of the pump’s ability to more efficiently move liquids of varying viscosity, and to work in extreme heat, the pump is well suited to Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD)—the process used in extracting oil from oilsands in Alberta.
There are currently eight Rotoliptic systems already in use in the oil and gas sector, Beaumont said. Other industries where the Rotoliptic pumps could be used include mining, pulp mills and sewage treatment plants.
“Our plan is to diversify our applications outside of oil and gas,” Beaumont said. “We would love to get to a point where we are making these pumps for any type of industrial manufacturing that need to pump fluids.”
Anodyne Chemistries is using a fairly radical alternative to conventional chemical and petrochemical processes—one that uses CO2 as a feedstock, and enzymes as a catalyst to make green chemicals, including methanol, formaldehyde and formic acid.
It’s a process that blends biology, chemistry and nanotechnology.
Enzymes are proteins that drive biological functions in plants and animals through chemical reactions. Anodyne uses specialized enzymes, electrically charged through nanowires, to trigger an electrochemical process that creates compounds from CO2 and water.
“If you think about how nature operates, from solar power coming into plants—they use enzymes to make chemicals,” said Anodyne chief investment officer Iain Evans. “We’re just using biomimicry to industrialize that process.
“We’re making the exact same chemicals that you know and rely upon today, but we’re doing it with a substantially lower footprint, and doing it at the price you already pay for those chemicals. The idea here is not to create a massive cost premium around green chemicals—it’s actually to produce the same chemical at the same price, with a massively reduced carbon footprint.”
The three main markets Anodyne is currently targeting are transportation fuels, cosmetics and agrochemicals.
“The one that is currently in vogue is sustainable aviation fuel (SAF)—so going from methanol production into SAF and marine transportation fuel,” Evans said. “Those are pretty big markets.”
Of the 25 B.C. cleantech startups on ForeSight’s Top 50 list, three are in the mine waste treatment and mineral extraction space.
Tersa Earth addresses problems like acid rock drainage with a process that both extracts valuable minerals from tailings ponds, and neutralizes more harmful metals and elements. Its core technology includes microbial fuel cells to extract copper and silver, and microbially induced carbonate precipitate to neutralize some of the more harmful elements, such as arsenic, barium, selenium and strontium.
WaterStrider Treatment Inc. also addresses mining’s water pollution problems. It has a three-stage treatment system to remove toxic metals from mine waste. The company is also working on a pilot system that extracts lithium from brines.
PH7 Technologies is likewise in the metals extraction space, though not from mine waste. The company developed an alternative to smelting—which is highly energy intensive—for the extraction of valuable metals like platinum, palladium and rhodium from discarded catalytic converters, diesel particulate filters and industrial catalysts used in petrochemical and pharmaceutical plants.
Its solvometallurgy process uses organic and inorganic chemicals and an electro-chemical process that can extract valuable metals from waste without generating emissions or wastewater.
Earlier this year, pH7 was awarded $1million in funding from the B.C. Centre for Innovation and Clean Energy (CICE), and last year raised $22 million in Series A financing.
Last week, pH7 also received $1.5 million in funding through the federal PacifiCan Business Scale-up and Productivity program.
