{"id":74756,"date":"2024-02-26T06:53:03","date_gmt":"2024-02-25T20:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aumanufacturing.com.au\/?p=74756"},"modified":"2024-02-27T18:21:01","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T07:51:01","slug":"trapping-forever-chemicals-with-nutshells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aumanufacturing.com.au\/trapping-forever-chemicals-with-nutshells","title":{"rendered":"Trapping forever chemicals with nutshells"},"content":{"rendered":"

Next up in our quest to seek out Australia\u2019s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers, we speak to a startup that\u2019s found a way to simultaneously add value to farming waste, address the environmental stain of PFAS, and sequester carbon dioxide. Brent Balinski speaks to Bygen founder Dr Lewis Dunnigan.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

A few years back, activated carbon\/charcoal seemed to have a moment as a food ingredient.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wellness enthusiasts latched onto certain detox claims, and the striking black potions, baked goods, ice creams etcetera made for fetching Instagram pics.<\/span><\/p>

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Outside of cafes and health food stores, the market for activated carbon is now growing steadily, not far off a double-digit percentage compound annual growth rate according to some market research reports.<\/span><\/p>\n

A big contributor is detoxification, specifically to address the PFAS family of chemicals, which have been used in everything from nonstick pans to water-repellent clothing to firefighting foams\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There are millions of tonnes of AC being traded a year globally, with contaminant removal a major driver of growth.<\/span><\/p>

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Do you think you belong on\u00a0@AuManufacturing<\/em>\u2019s list of Australia\u2019s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers? Apply to be recognised in this exclusive group\u00a0here.<\/a><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cPrimarily due to increasingly strict environmental standards around water quality and air quality which kind of facilitate its use in greater quantities,\u201d explains Dr Lewis Dunnigan, CEO and co-founder at Bygen.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c…They\u2019re called forever chemicals, so they don\u2019t actually naturally break down. So if they get into the human body it takes a very, very long time for them to actually be excreted. And that can have implications on the body\u2019s health. So there\u2019s now a bit of a race on to remediate contaminated sites.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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(As a side note, three nominations for Australia\u2019s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers so far have addressed PFAS. Two directly, through environmental remediation technologies, and a third through a product offering an alternative to products that traditionally use PFAS.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Besides their intense black colour, a feature of activated carbons is their high internal surface area due to their network of pores, which can be used to adsorb nasties from solids, liquids and gases.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dunnigan\u2019s company was spun out of the University of Adelaide while he was completing a PhD.<\/span><\/p>\n

Their low-temperature activation process is able to create activated carbon from agricultural waste while sequestering carbon dioxide \u2013 a big improvement on traditional methods.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dunnigan says these fall into either the physical or chemical activation categories. One uses steam at about 1,000 degrees celsius to treat coal — releasing about 18 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of product created — and the other uses strong acids or bases.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Bygen, their process is self-sustaining when up and running, and requires temperatures of only 200 degrees in combination with a mixture of gases.<\/span><\/p>\n

Their major feedstocks at the moment are wood and nutshells, as these are cheap and available in volume at centralised, nearby locations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Recent R&D has focussed on activated carbon specifically tailored to PFAS remediation and able to capture short-chain as well as long-chain species of PFAS chemicals.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the whole, innovation for the team is typically around trying to create a new material to achieve a certain result (for example to capture a problem type of chemical) or improve the way they make an existing material.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Dunnigan says that having a technically-minded team \u2013 the three founders began while studying or supervising chemical engineering PhDs \u2013 has meant that they accept that not every target will be met right away.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAny failure, if you want to call it that, really can provide very, very crucial learnings to help tailor your R&D approach afterwards,\u201d he adds.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think anyone who\u2019s been involved in research in the past knows that the success rate in a lot of R&D efforts is quite low. We certainly don\u2019t have the mentality that every missed target in terms of whatever QA\/QC metric that we\u2019re looking at is a failure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As for innovation, Dunnigan says he personally understands it as about calculated risks.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think innovation is really about looking at a problem, coming up with an approach to help solve that problem, and knowing that there is a great degree of risk there,\u201d he tells us.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut the rewards of actually achieving that outcome outweigh the risks. So it\u2019s really about being brave in the way you go about doing your work.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In this episode of <\/span>@AuManufacturing Conversations with Brent Balinski<\/span><\/i>, Dunnigan tells us about how and why Bygen got started, how their small size and early stage influenced their business model, some unforeseen challenges around skills, and more.<\/span><\/p>\n

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