With the current growth rate of humanity, our continued reliance on unsustainable natural resources as well as animal based nutrition cannot be the long term solution. And yet, our world needs to feed itself, produce ingredients for various industries and continue developing. We must find a solution which is truly sustainable and scalable on global scales. Many expert and companies are betting on microalgae to be this holy grail as they grow exponentially fast, require very little resources and produce an abundance of protein alongside many other ingredients relevant for a variety of industries. However, this great potential has a very high cost and quality barrier.
The current outdoor cultivation systems are very labor intensive, suffer from contaminations, produce inconsistent qualities at relatively low yields and result in very high costs. Some strains of microalgae are capable of growing in dark and closed reactors in a fermentation process based on sugar and then costs are very low and production is consistent. However, in the absence of light, almost all of the benefits and ingredients of microalgae are simply lost.
Brevel developed a disruptive microalgae cultivation technology which dramatically reduces the cultivation costs for light-dependent microalgae and enables penetration into new and yet untapped markets where microalgae biomass and derived products are much desired. The technology is based on shifting from very large, relatively inefficient and labor-intensive outdoor cultivation system to completely closed, sterile and fully automated indoor photobioreactors which are efficiently illuminated from within and are capable of continuous mixotrophic cultivation which combines photosynthesis with fermentation processes.
The patented Brevel mixotrophic cultivation technology has been successfully demonstrated on a large scale with surprising results of more than 90% cost reduction and up to 200 higher yields per land compared to current outdoor state-of-the-art photobioreactors.
During the project, Brevel will further scale-up the technology to fully commercial scales and construct the first factory which will produce microalgae-based ingredients for different markets. The first use-case which will be demonstrated in the project is a natural and sustainable salmon feed supplement which will replace the current synthetic additive which is produced from petrochemicals. The feed additive is a red pigment added to salmon feed which gives salmon its pinkish color. Natural alternatives do exist in the market, but at prohibitive costs. Due to its technological advantage, Brevel is able to produce the natural supplement from microalgae at comparable market costs. During the course of the project, Brevel will perform trials with customers and introduce the product to the market.
