Industrial Phycology (I-PHYC) is an award-winning UK based SME focused on the development of a sustainable, chemical free solution for the treatment of process and wastewaters (WW) and the recovery of valuable materials they contain such as nutrients. I-PHYC is achieving this by applying cutting-edge technology that enables the use of microalgae as an industrial process to treat wastewater from agricultural, industrial and municipal sources.
Founded by experts in algae and wastewater technology, I-PHYC has developed links in the industry with partners such as Wessex Water and GENeco Sustainable Solutions. Since 2014, I-PHYC has won a range of awards recognising the importance of its technology including; the Industrial Biotechnology Leadership Forum (IBSF) Award for Innovation and Technology Development; the award for most disruptive technology at the Global TAG forum; UK company with the most commercial potential at the Pitch@Palace.
I-PHYC has developed its technology in response to EU legislation along with economic and corporate social responsibility targets. This pressure is due to the ever increasing volumes of WW being discharged to the environment every year, with municipal WW alone producing 330km3 every year (UNEP “economic valuation of wastewater”). These WWs contain nutrients (e.g. phosphorus and nitrogen) that lead to eutrophication and degradation of the environment and even contamination of the water table. At the same time, many of these problem materials are valuable resources of limited global supply. This includes phosphorus, a key ingredient for fertiliser production.
Legislation and other pressures are demanding that the quality of WW released to the environment be improved and that where possible valuable materials such as phosphorus are recovered in a recyclable form. Unfortunately, at present water industry has no real solution to this problem especially at smaller, isolated sites. This has left industry struggling with ever more costly and unsustainable chemical based techniques such as ferric flocculation or expensive processes such as membrane filtration, neither of which are regarded as a viable long term option.
Algae offer a solution to many of these problems. Algae are unicellular plants capable of taking up the material left at the end of the WW treatment process, along with carbon dioxide and using it to grow and divide. This strips the nutrients and other material from the WW, cleaning it in the process. The algae produced can then be separated out and valorised through various routes such as; fertiliser production; biogas; bioplastics; feed stock for green chemistry. However, because of the emphasis in recent years placed on the production of biofuels and high value chemical from algae, the technology has not been developed to enable algae to be used as an industrial process that meets the needs of WW producers.
I-PHYC with the support of the EU H2020 SME instrument is developing the technology to overcome this challenge and enable algae to be used as a treatment and value recovery solution by municipal producers. At the same time the support of the SME instrument is allowing I-PHYC to investigate the WW produced by other industries, to see how it can help them improve their sustainability and recover valuable materials.
