Turning seaweed into industrial safety innovation

During industrial processes, there are often requirements for separation. Sometimes this is the separation of liquids from one another, but can involve gases too. Marine Biopolymers Ltd—a leading innovator in sustainable seaweed processing—have received funding from Innovate UK for the Alginic-acid to Safety (A2S) project. This £335,000 grant is supporting the development of alginic acid—a byproduct created from seaweed processing—into natural adsorbents for the filtration of toxic gases.

Superior performance through nature-based solutions

The project centres on the transformation of alginic acid into novel materials developed by Starbons Limited. Starbons are mesoporous materials derived from biorenewable polysaccharides, that can be used for these separation processes. 

The name Starbon® was established in the early days of their work to add value to starch, which is carbonised to fix the structure and give their materials a longer shelf life. Starbon® materials are made from starch, alginic acid, and pectin, and have  tuneable surface functionalities, and range from hydrophilic to hydrophobic, making them particularly effective for selectively separating one entity from another.

Additional project partners include the University of York (specifically, the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence), the Biorenewables Development Centre (an open-access research and development organisation specialising in scaling-up and helping to commercialise bio-based products) and ICMEA UK Ltd (an engineering company specialising in scale up of processes from pilot to commercial.

Future scale-up plans

The project’s aim is to achieve product scale up from already demonstrated pilot processes operated separately by Marine Biopolymers and Starbons. The longer-term vision is to invest in a co-located, integrated full scale production facility making use of indigenous, sustainably available seaweed, and Scotland’s abundant renewable energy in an optimised, low emissions process.