Carbon Upcycling Technologies

Calgary

Apoorv Sinha is adamant that cleantech companies must show ability to scale up and commercialize their technology, or the industry will face another burst bubble and frustrated investors.

“A lot of it boils down to, not only execution, but looking at some of the really tough parts around making innovation real, which is talking to customers, making sure that what you are doing actually solves the problem, making sure you are making their lives easier, not tougher, and taking all of that into account when you design your product,” he said.

He believes the company he co-founded, Carbon Upcycling, is close to proving itself in that realm with a new memorandum of understanding with a global concrete manufacturer LafargeHolcim to use the startup’s unique carbon-based material in its products.

Carbon Upcycling, a finalist in the Carbon XPRIZE, has nine employees plus contract staff, but Mr. Sinha says that number will increase quickly.

“You compare that to like 120,000 for Holcim, and the reason they’re showing interest is because of the significance this has strategically for them,” Mr. Sinha said at his company’s demonstration facility at the Shepard power plant.

“It’s really a way for us to punch above our weight, and this company is going to have to go to a few hundred employees in the next couple of years if we’re going to make the type of impact that we want.”

Concrete manufacturing is a major source of greenhouse gases, accounting for about 7 per cent of global CO2 emissions. Hence the industry’s keen interest in seeking breakthrough technology.

Carbon Upcycling’s additive, a supplementary cementitious material, or SCM, can be used to reduce the carbon intensity of concrete, but it can also be an ingredient in plastics, anti-corrosion coatings and a range of consumer products.

The environmental benefit is twofold: First, the company takes the carbon-based fly ash from the generating station and injects CO2 from the plant stacks into the material in its reactor, which is slightly smaller than a city bus. The additive also makes concrete stronger, and reduces its carbon footprint by 25 per cent.

Carbon Upcycling got its start in 2014, when Emissions Reduction Alberta held a competition for technology to convert emissions into products. Mr. Sinha worked with professors at universities in Calgary, Waterloo and Toronto, who helped prove the company’s prototype reactor could be replicated and scaled up.

Four years later, the company fielded calls from the likes of Burnco and TransAlta Corp. in Canada, and LafargeHolcim, asking if the materials could be used in the construction industry. Its relationship with Lafarge Canada grew as Carbon Upcycling entered the XPRIZE competition. It also joined the multinational building products company’s accelerator program in France.

“The scale-up exercise was because of XPRIZE and their deadlines. But really we could never justify it, quite frankly, for just a science competition. They don’t look at market traction, they don’t look at economics, they just look at scale up,” Mr. Sinha said. “What we wanted to make sure was, as a company, we’re actually doing something commercial.”