Develop a photobioreactor agricultural cultivation technology that enables the commercial production of edible algae protein that will successfully compete economically with other protein food sources globally with a production cost below $20/kg dry weight (dw).
Driving down capital and operating costs achieved by focused research activities
Basic technological components have been integrated to establish that they work together in a laboratory environment and have demonstrated that a doubling of both culture density and yield is possible over published literature values.
Successfully completed this demonstration at 10L capacity and producing 25-50 g/day of algae paste
Current harvesting of spirulina algae can occur either via batch processing or via continuous harvesting. The technology has been operating continuously for more than 1.5 yr.
SVDC has developed a patent pending flow-through technology platform that successfully doubles known yields and densities of algae, with key patent pending innovations and the ability to produce protein utilizing raw exhaust from a natural gas combined heat power (CHP) systems.
This project aims to scale to a commercial level of a 10m3 and to fully automate and optimize system processes from cultivation through to harvesting, drying, and storage.
The next step in scale up operations will be to design / construct a 1m3 PBR algae cultivation platform.
Increase yield
Therefore, research efforts must include emphasis on reducing the energy input costs.
The coordinated / integrated research activities are expected to result in moving the technology one important step closer to reaching a commercial scale PBR system at which point we envision the potential of initiating commercial production of a new algae agricultural protein product to markets, without competing with existing other Canadian terrestrial crops and producers.
Reduction of labour and energy inputs while scaling to a commercial level will serve to reduce protein production costs.Cultivation of the algae will result in quantifiable CO2 utilization and GHG emission mitigation activities associated with this agricultural sector.
Utilizing advanced PBR technologies have the potential of overcoming the climatic barrier and the ability to produce higher quality edible biomass.This translates into the potential to produce a new agricultural crop without impacting existing food production.