Saskatchewan University students are hoping to create energy from waste while establishing viable business opportunities.
“It’s a correct time in the environment to take such steps,” said Zafer Dallal Bashi, who with fellow PhD student Karthikeyan Narayanan is developing a process to convert waste vegetable oil into biodiesel.
Joel Ahmed, who will soon begin a doctorate program in bioresource engineering, shares their vision to add value to waste.
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He and 13 other researchers, through the company ViSens, have built an ethanol pilot plant at Innovation Place in Saskatoon to demonstrate on a small scale how farmers can turn their waste straw and fibre into ethanol.
“Farmers can produce food for the rest of the world and also fuel for the rest of the world,” Ahmed said.
“In Alberta, there’s oil wealth; in Saskatchewan, we’d like to have a lot of bio-ethanol plants and create the next generation of fuel for Canada and the world.”
The students are participating in the University of Saskatchewan’s BioVenture Business Plan Challenge. Five finalists were named during a presentation in Saskatoon Sept. 12. The winners will receive $50,000 in seed money in 2009 for their enterprise.
Ahmed envisions 40 farmers in a region each supplying about one million litres of ethanol a year from their plants to a community-based distillery.
The plants are estimated to cost $250,000 each.
With governments calling for increased amounts of ethanol in the fuel supply to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, he believes Saskatchewan has the potential to make its own ethanol. Such a policy would allow the province to fulfill its fuel requirements rather than looking to the United States for imports, he added.
Ahmed thinks farmers could pay off their plant costs within two to three years through shipments to the community plants.
Such plants could revitalize rural communities, just as towns once flourished around the business of grain elevators, he said.
“This is a tool towards that betterment. Let’s create momentum and growth,” Ahmed said.
Energy independence is influencing Bashi’s work.
He described a chemical process using salt and ethanol that will separate waste oil collected from restaurants and processors into glycerol and biodiesel. Bashi estimated a $4,000 to $7,000 machine could extract 2,000 litres.
The glycerol will be used to make cosmetics while tax exemptions for using the biodiesel produced in farm equipment could provide farmers with an affordable fuel source similar to purple gas of the past.
“It’s a sustainable approach to an energy source,” he said.
Waste oil is shipped to British Columbia as yellow grease and converted to biodiesel.
“Our idea is to use it in the local economy,” he said, citing benefits to individuals and the local community.
Bashi said oil waste is an environmental concern because it degrades slowly.
He thinks fluctuating fuel prices in recent years make this a timely enterprise.
On the environmental side, creating biodiesel is preferable to black oil, which has more carbon release.
He and his business partner are considering operational models and costs and studying options, while also analyzing the roller coaster ride of fuel prices and its potential impact on their business plan and profitability.
ViSens is also a work in progress and is developing automated mechanical systems and pre-treatment processes using enzymes to lower the energy required to convert straw into revenue for the farmer.
