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Canada’s Premier Cleantech Destination

Extracting sustainability from core industries – “Friend of Cleantech Commons”, Carbonix, helps resource industries remediate residues

Blog, Company News June 18, 2020
A future Cleantech Commons tenant, Carbonix, has been profiled by Alberta Innovates, which says that the cleantech company “has been working to help forestry, mining, and oil and gas industries remediate their residues and return land and water to its original, natural state“.

Based in Fort William First Nation, Carbonix is developing a proprietary process using activated carbon to treat industrial waste streams and clean up contaminated environments.

Carbonix is an Indigenous-owned clean-tech company based in Fort William First Nation.

The startup has developed a proprietary environmentally-friendly process to manufacture customizable and lower cost activated carbon using sustainably sourced feedstocks.

Alberta Innovates says in their “Innovation in Action” feature titled “Extracting sustainability from core industries” that since 2013, Carbonix has been working with researchers from Trent University’s Department of Chemistry.

See: “Friend of Cleantech Commons”, Carbonix, provides a green solution to clean up contaminated environments

“[Carbonix has] investigated the conversion of various materials – including petroleum coke, sustainable feedstock and timber scraps – into activated carbon, and to tailor the use of activated carbon as a remedial agent for the treatment of various tailings/waste from extractions. The research has been successful, and Carbonix has developed several IPs around converting materials into activated carbon products,” Alberta Innovates writes. You can read the full Alberta Innovates story here!

Working with Trent University’s chemistry department, Carbonix has developed a proprietary process that can convert large amounts of petroleum coke and boiler char – previously considered waste byproducts – into activated carbon.

After successfully completing a project with a grant from the Ontario Centre of Excellence (OCE), Carbonix President & CEO, Paul Pede, was introduced to an interprovincial program between the OCE and Alberta Innovates (AI), called the Alberta-Ontario Innovation program.

The program existed to create economic benefits for both provinces through multidisciplinary collaboration resulting in job retention and creation, enhanced productivity and competitiveness, knowledge transfer and industry revenue growth.

Alberta Innovates and OCE jointly funded a project between Carbonix and Suncor, which integrated activated carbon products into tailings produced during bitumen extraction. The two-year project included a proof of concept, which demonstrated successful results.

In July 2019, Carbonix received $3.1 million in federal funding to support their research over a two-year period and scale up the project. Learn more about that here!