ALcarbo Technologies – Capturing Carbon With Algae

By Nelson, Pok Him Ng, Bill, Kwan Wai Chan, Rex, Yan Chu Cheung 23 January, 2024

Did you know that algae captures 40x more CO2 than trees? We chat with Founders of ALcarbo Technologies to learn more about their innovative technology & future plans

Alcarbo Technologies Limited is a biotechnology corporation that developed an innovative algae photobioreactor system that can absorb and neutralise carbon dioxide into a profitable commodity. Microalgae are highly efficient carbon-fixing organisms which can capture 40 times more carbon than trees can and are considered a permanent and quantifiable carbon fixing solution. We sat down with the Founder and two Co-founders of Alcarbo Technologies Limited, Nelson Ng Pok Him, Bill Chan Kwan Wai and Rex Cheung Yan Chu to find out why they started their company, algae’s potential, next steps and more.

CWR: Why did you start the company? And why algae?

ALcarbo Technologies (AT): Climate change is one of the most important world issues nowadays. It is estimated that there are over US$20 trillion in economic losses due to climate change. The major reason for such disastrous climate change is the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). In the past centuries, scientists and engineers developed numerous technologies to improve our lives, we travel by car and plane and use electricity to power our city. However, that energy was harvested from fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas. Initially, when we used them, we released tons of carbon into the atmosphere which was safely sequestered beneath the Earth’s surface.

Algae is a powerful photosynthetic CO2 absorber – captures 40x more CO2 than trees…

…which inspired us to start ALcarbo Technologies

However, if this situation continues into the future, the atmospheric concentration will rise to a level that causes disastrous greenhouse effects, which will threaten human civilization. Therefore, we wanted to do something and find a way to save our future. Fortunately, nature gives us a valuable tool, which is called algae. Algae is a powerful photosynthetic CO2 absorber, which has a 40 times higher CO2 absorbing ability compared to the trees. This provides us with a possible solution for us to neutralize the atmospheric CO2.

Therefore, we came up with Alcarbo Technologies Limited, a biotechnology corporation developing a revolutionary algae photobioreactor system (PBRs) to neutralize CO2. Our innovative technology utilizes algae photosynthesis, providing an alternative solution to convert CO2 into profitable products. Our main office is now at the Hong Kong Science & Technology Park and a small production plant in San Tin, Yuen Long.

CWR: How does your technology work? How does it differ from the ones on the market?

AT: Our technology includes three main parts, nano-bubble PBRs, culture medium formulation and algae mutants. These technologies allow our algae to grow much faster and produce higher density and purity algae compared to other competitors in the market.

Our algae PBRs are cutting-edge – grow faster, space-saving & cost-effective…

… = sustainable solution for reducing HK’s CO2 emissions

We designed and built a cutting-edge algae PBRs. The system directly captures CO2 from the atmosphere and provides a space-saving, cost-effective and sustainable solution for reducing Hong Kong’s CO2 emissions. The culture of these microorganisms can conveniently and accurately be scaled up to significantly offset carbon emissions by fixing carbon dioxide and converting it to oxygen through photosynthesis. The PBRs run automatically and can be managed easily with the online monitoring system. The most important aspect is that we applied nanobubble technologies in our photobioreactor design. The reactor diffuses more CO2 to the algae than other diffusion methods and allows the algae to grow faster and capture more CO2 than traditional reactor designs.

We applied fundamental knowledge and molecular biology techniques to select suitable algae strains with gigantic carbon-fixing organelles from over 75,000 species. We used mutagens to induce random DNA mutation of the wild-type algae genome to increase its carbon-fixing capability further. The most favored mutants were selected based on their phenotypic differences and further analyzed by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and whole-genome sequencing. The superior algae mutants will have a super-efficient CO2-capturing ability. We call them the “Super carbon-fixing mutant”. We also designed our own culture media formula to reduce the cost of culturing Super carbon-fixing algae and to optimize the algae cell division rate.

1 volleyball court of PBRs = 1 acre forest CO2 capture…

…thanks to Super Carbon-Fixing Mutants’ super-efficient CO2 capturing ability

Until now, our photobioreactor has successfully captured CO2 at the rate of 0.54g L-1d-1, which means covering a volleyball court with our PBRs can capture the equivalent amount of CO2 as one acre of forest. The captured CO2 can also be calculated and transformed into carbon credits for companies to offset their carbon footprint. Our solution is space-saving, cost-effective, more sustainable and key for neutralizing CO2 emissions by 2050.

CWR: What challenges have you faced?

AT: As a new startup company, we have overcome a lot of difficulties and challenges. At the very beginning, we had no experience with algae culturing, and could only successfully culture them with commercial media which was very expensive. Therefore, we wanted to develop our own media formulation to reduce the cost. The process was not easy, and to succeed, we did hundreds of tests and modifications of media formulation.

At first we had no experience in algae culturing & it was costly…

…plus it took a year to find suitable space for small scale production

After we had solved the technical problem, we faced the second problem, which is a very common problem in Hong Kong for project building, we were lacking spaces for our prototype testing. Our first prototype was built in Au Tau with a small space borrowed from the government. And it took us nearly a year to find suitable land space for our construction work and small-scale production. Luckily, we finally met a fish farmer who allowed us to rent his space so that we could build our first production base.

CWR: Is your company planning to expand its projects? Or go international?

AT: Although it is difficult, our team believes that building the demonstration carbon capture facility with our hands can help us understand every detail during the scale-up progress in the future. We gained much precious experience, and the building process became one of our most unforgettable memories.

Next step is to scale up in HK & become a good demonstration site

We are now planning to scale up our business in Hong Kong which provides a good demonstration site for other countries to kickstart their carbon capture journey. In the next 5 years, we will move our production plant to other parts of Southeast Asia and further scale up our production. Finally, we will eventually spread our business and go international.

CWR: How can we as consumers contribute to solving the problem?

AT: We have got the Product Carbon Footprint Report from CMA already. We hope that our carbon credit products can be launched this year. Both individual and commercial customers are welcome to find the carbon credit solution for them. Every dollar they spend on it will be beneficial to help us remove CO2 from the atmosphere. We hope that our work can save our Earth for the next generations.

This year, we hope to launch carbon credit products for our customers

Apart from the carbon credit, the algae products are also commercially available to the public. Everyone can easily purchase different algae products from our website. Our customers are usually the local fish farmers in Hong Kong, some research groups from universities and some biotechnology companies. The main reason for us to place our algae products on the online platform is so that we can promote algae tech.

Since the public has limited knowledge about algae, it is a pity that they do not know how to utilize this valuable organism. For example, our algae is good feeding to fish larvae, which helps the fish farming business develop in Hong Kong; it can also act as the raw material for making biofuels; or making human supplements. Therefore, we sell our algae to the public on our website in hopes that more people can know about this.

CWR: What is a piece of advice you would like to give to governments/investors and/or entrepreneurs trying to solve these issues?

AT: We think that the carbon reduction policies from the government are not enough to push the public to tackle climate change. They need to set up laws and policies to encourage the reduction of carbon footprint in Hong Kong in a faster way.

Further Readings

• A Conversation with Antonio Ng: Carbon Sequestering Cement — Concrete = 11% of global emissions. Frustrated about not moving the needle on emissions, Ng, former architect & now FORMWORK IO CEO, walks us through his carbon sequestering cement start-up
• i2Cool: Cooling Paint for Buildings — Painting Hong Kong’s buildings with iPaint could reduce 580,000 tonnes of carbon emissions. We chat with i2Cool Founder, Dr Zhu to find out more
• Greenie Web: Decarbonizing Websites — Greenie Web’s program analyses a website to recommend near instant decarbonization actions. Chew, Founder of Greenie Web expands on the program & talks the future of technological sustainability

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