Xanthella Ltd and ALIenergy are very pleased to announce the start of a new pioneering project continuing the innovative work which took place in the ASLEE project. Energy and the Bioeconomy (ENBIO) project, funded by Zero Waste Scotland (www.zerowastescotland.org.uk), is highly innovative and (to our knowledge) currently unique in the world. It uses algal bioproduction to enable new industry in rural areas and at the same time increasing the strength of the rural circular economy by enabling better use of stranded timber and distillery coproducts.
The project builds on the existing LECF-funded ASLEE project which has developed a novel, class-leading internally lit photobioreactor (Pandora) whose lighting can be externally controlled to meet grid demands, allowing the PBRs to be used as a rapidly-acting balancer of local renewable energy production. The ASLEE project also demonstrated that the algae are very tolerant to light intermittency, making their production an ideal transactive load.
The ENBIO project will see sixteen 1000 litre Pandora PBRs deployed at the Ardnamurchan Estate using surplus energy from the CHP plant to produce high value algae and automatically matching local electricity demand with production. The Ardnamurchan PBR array will give Scotland a lead in industrial scale algal biotechnology in the UK.
In addition, the ENBIO project will contribute to the low carbon economy through helping reduce transport costs, displace algal imports that are currently air shipped to Scotland, achieve better use of distillery co-products and directly incorporate CO2 into the algae.
Within the project ALIenergy is working with Xanthella (www.xanthella.co.uk) and Ardnamurchan Estate (www.ardnamurchanestate.co.uk).
Representatives from the partner organisations and Zero Waste Scotland gathered for a kick off meeting at Xanthella’s offices at Malin House, Dunstaffnage, near Oban, on Thursday 26th October.
