agents to meet a demand that arose during World War II. In 2008 NRC researchers switched their focus to producing biofuels from microalgae. “What we found is that, yes, biofuel is an interesting product and environmentally relevant, but what was even more rele-vant was the fact that to produce the microalgal biomass required to make fuels, we needed large quantities of carbon dioxide and also forms of nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen; and we wanted to derive those from industrial, municipal, and agricul-tural waste streams,” O’Leary says. From there, in 2011, the Algal Carbon Conversion program was born and the NRC began a world-wide search for companies devel-oping algal biorefinery technolo-gies that would work in Canadian Algal carbon conversion enables companies to recycle their industrial CO 2 climates. Enter Pond Technologies emissions by incorporating them into algal biomass, which can be processed into and St Marys Cement. valuable products such as bio-oils, biofuels, and feedstock. Photo courtesy NRC. “We knew that Pond IBCE-1-2H-CanadianBiomassMag-022317.pdf 1 2/23/2017 1:27:46 PM Technologies had some experi-ence in developing their tech-nology for real industrial deploy-ment. It wasn’t just something that they would make work in the lab but wouldn’t work in the real world,” O’Leary says. FROM EMISSIONS TO BIOMASS As with many other industrial processes, the conversion of lime-stone into cement uses heat and therefore requires fuel. “It requires an immense amount of heat and, as a result, takes a significant amount of energy to manufacture cement,” Asselstine says. The St. Marys plant fuels its kiln primarily with coal, which accounts for about 50 per cent of its emissions, the bulk of which is C0 2 . The other 50 per cent of C0 2 emissions are generated through calcination, the process by which limestone (calcium carbonate) becomes calcium silicates through CALL US TODAY (866) 746-8385 BiomassConf erence.com C M Y Exclusive Discount to Canadian Biomass Magazine Subscribers WORLD’S LARGEST BIOMASS EVENT CM MY CY CMY K with Discount Code: CANBIO250 *Discount Applies to Full Conference General Registration Save $250 Minneapolis Convention Center, Minneapolis, MN BiomassConference.com 866-746-8385 [email protected] 20 CBM_IBCE_MarApr17_CSA.indd 1 Canadian BIOMASS MARCH/APRIL 2017 2017-02-24 10:43 AM
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