The Government of Canada is showing its commitment to stimulating innovation and job creation with an investment of $10 million to help 5 new Ontario-based companies with clean technology projects across the country reach commercialization.
1. Lead organization: Ubiquity Solar Inc.
Project Title: High Performance PV Polysilicon and Ingot Plant
Environmental Benefits: Climate change/Clean air
Economic Sector: Power generation
SDTC Investment: $3.1 million
Consortium Members:
Ubiquity Solar Inc.
University of Waterloo – Centre for Advanced PV Devices and Systems
University of Toronto
McMaster University
Fraunhofer Centre for Silicon Photovotaics CSP
ECN Solar Energy, Silicon Photvoltaics
Si Con
Core Business Developers LLC
Jerry Olson Consulting
DJ Met Consulting
Project Description:
The solar industry continues to look for reductions in the cost of modules and increases in performance and reliability in order to make solar power increasingly attractive. Ubiquity Solar Inc.’s SolarBrickTM is the product of a new approach to using monocrystalline silicon to convert sunlight into electricity. The modules made with this material are more efficient than current industry standard products, are less susceptible to light-induced degradation and hold the potential for very long lifetimes, resulting in a major increase in the energy captured over the lifespan of a solar system. This technology will further improve the economics of solar energy, increasing the profits of component manufacturers and expanding the environmental benefits of PV.
2. Lead organization: Morgan Solar
Project Title: Sun Simba™ Gen 4.0
Environmental Benefits: Climate change/Clean air
Economic Sector: Power generation
SDTC Investment: $2 million
Consortium Members:
Morgan Solar Inc.
SkyPower Global Inc.
University of Ottawa
SunLab
Project Description:
The use of solar energy has grown eight-fold over the past five years – a real opportunity for a company developing low-cost components. Morgan Solar is continuing to develop its cutting-edge Concentrated Photovoltaic (CPV) panel, which is twice as efficient as conventional silicon PV panels, and can be manufactured for half the cost. This project will lower the number of parts needed to produce a panel while using a lower-cost material for those parts. Initially designed for utility scale projects – large ground-mounted solar farms – the light-weight and small form factor of the Sun Simba 4 also shows great promise for future rooftop, small scale and off-grid applications.
3. Lead organization: Electro-Kinetic Solutions
Project Title: Electro-Kinetic Reclamation of Oil Sands Tailings Development and Field Demonstration
Environmental Benefits: Climate change/Clean air/Clean water/Clean soil
Economic Sector: Energy exploration and production
SDTC Investment: $2.1 million
Consortium Members:
Electro-Kinetic Solutions
Shell Canada
DPRA Canada
Project Description:
The oil sands extraction process can result in tailings ponds, bodies of water filled with a mixture of water, clay, sand and residual bitumen. Electro-Kinetic Solutions (EKS) will demonstrate their low-current, electrode array, which will apply an electric field to separate water from oil sands tailings and simultaneously compact the solids. The technology has the potential to reduce the cost of treating tailings while recovering significant amounts of water for re-use. This project will demonstrate that the technology is practical and economically feasible at large scale. EKS estimates that its process could allow oil sands operators to meet stringent tailings reclamation requirements at a lower cost than incumbent approaches and recycle over 200 million m3 of water annually by 2023.
4. Lead organization: Cleeve Technologies
Project Title: Environmentally Efficient De-Coating of Aerospace Structures
Environmental Benefits: Clean water/Clean soil
Economic Sector: Transportation
SDTC Investment: $710,000
Consortium Members:
BRIC Engineered Systems
IMP Aerospace
Boeing Aerospace
Project Description:
Aircraft operate in harsh environments, taking the brunt of storms, extreme climates, and the high-velocity impact of debris. In order to preserve their structural integrity, their protective coatings must be regularly removed and refreshed – a de-coating process that results in hazardous waste. In addition to the environmental hazards, de-coating of aircraft surfaces is a costly process which can constitute 33% to 50% (depending on the aircraft) of the total operating cost for a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility. Cleeve Technologies is developing an environmentally-efficient de-coating technology that uses robotics and lasers to remove protective coatings from large, complex aerospace structures. Cleeve’s technology reduces the overall environmental footprint for a de-coating operation by keeping the use of substances of environmental concern to a minimum and, in addition, it is expected to reduce the overall cost of performing these operations by over 86%. The goal of this project is to enable a fully automated process capable of de-coating 95 percent of a medium-sized commercial aircraft.
5. Lead organization: GreenMantra Technologies
Project Title: Catalytic De-polymerization of Recycled Plastics into Waxes
Environmental Benefits: Climate change/clean air/Clean soil
Economic Sector: Forestry, Wood Products and Pulp& Paper Products
SDTC Investment: $ 2 million
Consortium Members:
GreenMantra Technologies
Stewardship Ontario
Sylvite Agri-Services Ltd.
Project Description:
Wax represents a $10 billion global industry that has a high dependence on fossil fuels: 94 percent of waxes are derived from petroleum, coal and natural gas. One of the major uses of industrial waxes is engineered wood products, the wood boards commonly found in floors, desks and walls. As oil prices go up, so do the prices of these industrial waxes, leaving engineered wood producers seeking new sources of waxes that perform well and also have a lesser impact on the environment and a lower cost. The GreenMantra technology is a catalytic process that converts post-consumer waste plastic (i.e., plastic bags, plastic films or wraps) into higher value products such as waxes, lubricating oils/greases and fuels, resulting in an environmentally-friendly and cost-competitive substitution for petroleum-based waxes. This project will implement the innovative process, enabling the use of low-value recycled plastics to create industry waxes cost-effectively.
