Blooms, Bots and Biofuels with Algaenic

Algaenic’s autonomous robots gather harmful algal blooms and transform them into biofuels, bioplastics and biochemicals. Removing these blooms is the equivalent of preventing 9 billion tonnes of carbon emissions, while turning algae into biofuel unlocks a trillion-dollar market opportunity. Carbon13 was drawn to Algaenic because of the size of that opportunity and, importantly, the calibre of the founding team.  

CSO Blessing Allen-Adebayo brings a PhD in environmental microbiology and remediation that she’s applied for over 10 years to build commercial systems around climate science. CTO Peter Bebbington built his expertise in marine autonomy as a mechatronics engineer designing steering systems for autonomous vehicles. Finally, a third co-founder, currently in stealth, with serial experience taking deep tech hardware from prototype to production as co-founder and CEO of an award-winning robotics company. Below, Head of Marketing Sara Jones sits down with Blessing and Peter to uncover Algaenic’s journey from the Venture Builder Programme, where they are now, and their future vision. 

Sara: Hello, I’m joined by Blessing and Peter of Algaenic. First off, please give us a super quick description of what Algaenic is doing with harmful algae blooms. 

Peter: Algaenic is looking to use low-energy autonomous systems to tackle harmful algal blooms. So, by “tackling,” we mean we’d like to harvest that material and, through processes of bioremediation, convert it into the materials of the future including biofuels, bioplastics, and biofertilisers. 

why this team

Sara: What makes your founding team so uniquely qualified to tackle this problem with this technology? 

Blessing: Okay, so we built our journey around three things that wouldn’t usually sit within the same founding team, as you’ve noticed: deep biological science, which I bring to the team, autonomous robotics, and a strong commercial vision. I bring the science side of things, bioremediation, with my PhD in environmental microbiology, and that lets me develop the downstream technology. Pete, our CTO, brings artificial intelligence, robotics, and years of experience developing autonomous vessels. And our third co-founder, who’s in stealth, brings the commercial and vision edge for the team. 

The breakthrough

Sara: What is the technological breakthrough, especially on the robotics side, that’s going to enable you to operate at the energy intensity level you’re aiming for? 

Blessing: There’s a lot of research going on around growing algae in photobioreactors for biofuels and bioplastics, but it’s the energy expended at that stage that’s prohibitive, both on a price point basis and a supply basis. 

But nature does a lot of this for you, for free.  We don’t want to go into too much detail right now, since there are potentially patents involved. With some of the systems we’ve got, we’re looking at a reduction of around 50% in energy expenditure to harvest this material, as opposed to a photobioreactor or open-pool-based system. 

the milestones

Sara: So, you’re in early conversations, what are the significant milestones you’ve achieved since Carbon13? 

Blessing: Well, Carbon13 is where things really started to happen. It’s where we became an entity, we teamed up at Carbon13, we built our carbon case at Carbon13, and we won the UK Growth Catalyst Fund. I also won the Women in Innovation Award while at Carbon13. 

But if you ask me what the most significant milestone is, it’s simply the sheer level of interest from water companies. We currently have a lot of interest from water companies, and we’ll be collaborating with one of them to harvest blooms starting next month, in August. That’s an important milestone for us, and by the end of the year we’ll be able to share those results. 

the opportunity 

Sara: What does success look like at scale for the venture? 

Peter: The opportunities are huge. It sounds crazy, but you can disrupt huge material supply chains. So far, we’ve partnered with organisations that have novel technology to take the biofeedstocks we produce and turn them into sustainable aviation fuel. It’s a big problem, because they’ve got the markets for it but can’t get reliable feedstocks.  

Sara: Give me an idea of the size of this opportunity. 

Blessing: From our market analysis, which is on our slide deck, it’s a trillion-dollar opportunity, because there are various markets involved. Everything that oil can produce can be produced from harmful algal blooms. The biomass from harmful algal blooms can replace crude oil. 

So, think about the size of all these markets, biofuels, bioplastics, and even parts of the cosmetics industry. Many of these can feed into the feedstock while also reducing carbon emissions. 

The only thing missing is the technology for conversion, the technology to harvest and process. As soon as that’s solved, this recurring problem, which is quite abundant all over the world, can be addressed just by solving the technology. 

Sara: Okay, those are all my questions. Thank you very much, Peter and Blessing, for chatting with us today.