Cleantech: a green industrial revolution

7 November 2024

Ingenio, Business and economy, Science and technology, Environment, Sustainable impact, Alumni

The reality behind New Zealand's 'clean green' image might be questionable, but there's no doubting the emergence of New Zealand's rapidly growing and ambitious cleantech sector. And among its ranks are University of Auckland researchers and alumni developing high-value solutions with significant potential global reach.

With a core aim to improve environmental sustainability, 135 registered New Zealand cleantech companies have raised more than $535 million in private capital over the past two years.

Among them is Daisy Lab, co-founded by Business School alumna Irina Miller, which aims to reduce the nation's dependence on the $26 billion dairy industry. The startup believes it can dramatically reduce dairy-sector greenhouse gas emissions, by 60-90 percent, using precision fermentation to produce proteins such as whey and casein.

"What it also offers is huge reductions in water and land use," says Irina. "We have way too many cows here in this country. We are much better off farming less."

In essence, Daisy Lab takes a gene from a cow and uses it to modify yeast, which in turn produces protein as part of its life cycle. And the business wants to lean into the country's reputation as one of the world's most efficient protein producers.

"New Zealand is a great place to be, because we have so many talented food technologists," says Irina. "That's really the knowledge that we want to package alongside our technology, and that's what we want to ship out and license to global dairy processers."

Gaining Environmental Protection Authority approval to use genetically modified yeasts, which are eliminated in the final liquid, will allow Daisy Lab to increase production 100 fold, scaling from a lab to a pilot plant.

By refining its yeast strain design and solving some engineering challenges for continuous fermentation, Irina believes there's a "very strong case" for scalability of the technology to achieve cost parity or even undercut dairy on price. And the dairy industry is also playing its part after the Tatua Co operative signed up as a minority shareholder.

"They've been, in many ways, instrumental to our success, particularly in developing this downstream processing and purification of our proteins," says Irina. "And I can only hope that this relationship will continue."

Tackling medical waste

For Professor Saeid Baroutian, in the University's Department of Chemicals and Materials Engineering, forging close relationships, in his case with the health sector, is also crucial as he develops environmentally friendly solutions for the disposal of medical waste.

Anaesthetic gases released every year by a single New Zealand hospital create an environmental impact equivalent to 500 return plane journeys from Auckland to London - but a cost-effective solution may be in sight after a promising desk-top evaluation.

Through a start-up called Gaiatech, Saied has partnered with Southern Cross Healthcare to test a proof of concept. It involves the design of a canister system that will be filled with a functionalised adsorbent (a porous solid material often used to extract pollutants) sourced from a waste stream to capture waste anaesthetic gas.

"Our technology is zero waste; we are not generating any waste through our processing. It's chemical free, which means it's safe and is sustainable, and there's a low energy requirement."

While some more expensive overseas solutions claim to recover and recycle anaesthetic drugs, Gaiatech will destroy them and then extract elemental forms of carbon, fluorine and hydrogen as value-added products.

One challenge will be to navigate the regulatory requirements for the introduction of new medical technology, but the concept won't require any capital expenditure for hospitals and will represent "a small percentage of the total cost of surgery", says Saeid.

With support from UniServices, Saeid has co-founded another start-up, called Nurox Hydrothermal, which uses pressurised hot water and compressed air to destroy hazardous medical waste like pharmaceuticals and toxic chemotherapy treatments. These would otherwise end up in landfill or be sent overseas for incineration.

"Our technology can convert those waste materials into value-added platform chemicals like acetic acid, which has lots of industrial applications."

In conjunction with New Zealand healthcare providers, pharmaceutical manufacturers and waste management companies, Nurox aims to commercialise a scalable process that could be used for other challenging and hazardous waste streams from sectors such as manufacturing and agriculture.

Circular economy solutions

As the executive director of the recently launched Circular Innovations Research Centre (CIRCUIT), Saeid also leads a cross-disciplinary group of more than 60 researchers from five University faculties whose goal is to accelerate the transition from a linear to a circular economy by eliminating waste and pollution.

"The challenges in sustainability and circularity are very complex, and that requires multiple skill sets from academia, industry, communities and government to get together and provide a holistic solution."

Among numerous projects on the drawing board is an initiative to recycle waste from the rapidly growing medicinal cannabis industry into biofertiliser. Another is to identify new recycling loops for metallic and composite waste (made from a mix of materials).

The challenges in sustainability and circularity are very complex, and that requires multiple skill sets.

Professor Saeid Baroutian Department of Chemicals and Materials Engineering

In partnership with Business School senior lecturer Dr Kiri Dell (Ngāti Porou), Saeid is also involved in a Māori-led circular economy project to transform East Coast kānuka into high-value products. Backed by a $1.9 million grant from the Government's Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures, the Nuka Charitable Trust will commission a pilot plant at Ruatoria at the end of 2024 to produce 'liquid smoke' and juice for food flavouring and preservation from the hardy, scrubby tree.

"The aim is to create jobs for small Māori communities in Tairāwhiti/Gisborne," says Saeid, who has also formed a team of researchers from different faculties to help develop resilient and sustainable energy and infrastructure systems for these isolated communities that are vulnerable to climate change.

Waste heat to whirlwinds

The East Coast has also become the crucial testing ground for a radical new way to generate electricity by using waste heat from industrial processes to drive turbines.

Co-founded by Faculty of Engineering alumni Professor Richard Flay and Dr Neil Hawkes, Vortex Power Systems has built a pilot plant north of Gisborne - safely away from airline flight paths - to prove a concept that involves sending artificial whirlwinds into the atmosphere.

"We need a diverse range of green power sources, and one of the things that makes our idea attractive is that this works when the wind's not blowing. So that's obviously commercially useful," says Neil, who was inspired by the whirlwinds he observed while flying a gyrocopter.

The second stage involves the design of a turbine and generator for the likes of steel mills or power stations where nearly half the energy is lost through thermodynamic limits.

"If we attach our technology to an existing power station, heat that was otherwise going to be completely wasted is repurposed to increase the overall efficiency of the station."

Initially funded by the University of Auckland Inventors' Fund and supported by UniServices, Vortex started out as Neil's PhD project. However, it now consists of what he describes as a "wider coalition of expertise and commitment" to navigate the commercial universe.

Describing the project as "an enormous opportunity" to turn waste heat into something useful, Neil says "we can't turn back the tide with respect to global warming, but we can at least make a contribution in that direction".

Green chemistry's potential

With a core mission to advance scientific research, the Centre for Green Chemical Science is focused on finding safe alternatives to chemicals derived from fossil carbon sources. It's also promoting the value of green chemistry.

"Sometimes, chemistry is seen as a dirty, polluting science, so we're trying to redress that perception," says the centre's director, Dr Cameron Weber.

As well as running a globally unique undergraduate programme, the centre is working with industry to recycle waste from the forestry and seafood sectors, and from winemaking, which produces a large amount of waste known as grape marc.

Backed by a $9.8 million MBIE Endeavour Fund grant, researchers have successfully established a proof of principle and are working to build a pilot plant at the University's Centre for Goldwater Wine Science on Waiheke Island.

"They're looking at making antimicrobial packaging materials from some of the tannins," says Cameron, by way of example.

The huge amount of forestry waste produced by the timber industry is also being scrutinised. Rather than using bark to decorate gardens or as boiler fuel, scientists are trying to extract chemical components in a joint project with the Crown Research Institute Scion.

Sometimes, chemistry is seen as a dirty, polluting science, so we're trying to redress that perception.

Dr Cameron Weber Centre for Green Chemical Science

"We can pull out a lot of the tannins from the bark waste and end up with a residue that's mainly lignin and cellulose, which can then be taken forward for different types of applications," says Cameron.

Looking ahead, he points to the need for more government support for R&D.

"Cleantech companies are really important to the future economy in diversifying away from the reliance on a few larger industries as the bulk of our national economy."

So long forever chemicals?

In the somewhat scary world of petrochemicals, PFAS (per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances) are widely recognised for their ability to keep food from sticking to frypans - and invade the bloodstream of an estimated 97 percent of Americans.

But Dr Erin Leitao is on a mission to put the so-called 'forever chemicals' out of business. Backed by a $941,000 Marsden Fund grant, the senior lecturer in chemistry is leading a team with considerable global reach to find safer alternatives.

"If we can target some of the essential use applications, in the electronics industry for example, then we could make a real difference overall."

Given that there are upwards of 10,000 PFAS on the market, Erin is quick to admit that they're "not going to solve all of the problems", but says "if we can find even one alternative that could work for one essential application, that's a huge environmental saving".

Developed in the 1940s, PFAS consist of unique and incredibly durable carbon-fluorine bonds that will be challenging to replicate, and Erin's three-year project will adopt a 'safe-by-design' approach so that any substance they produce is understood from cradle-to-grave.

"Just making these alternatives isn't sufficient; we need to do our due diligence. We need to figure out how they're going to degrade. We need to have product stewardship."

Reflecting on her almost nine years at the University of Auckland, and her role as an associate investigator at the MacDiarmid Institute, which has helped create dozens of start-ups, the Canadian-born scientist says that academics starting businesses are much less common overseas.

"One of the things that actually attracted me to moving here and doing research was that you have a much shorter route to creating a company," she says. "I would argue that we're doing really well on the international stage."

Converting waste carbon dioxide

One sustainability-driven researcher gaining international attention is Dr Ziyun Wang, whose childhood passion for Lego and computer games has played a role in potentially solving one of the world's greatest environmental challenges - how to convert waste carbon dioxide into useful products.

"You see so many great works from Lego, you can build almost everything. And we think CO2 is another space where we can do everything."

In his role as a computational chemist in the School of Chemical Sciences, Ziyun has led a team of researchers who designed a catalyst derived from waste lead-acid batteries that successfully reduced CO2 into formic acid for potential use as a fuel.

Describing the ability to operate the catalyst continuously for more than 5,000 hours as "a big step toward commercialisation", Ziyun says that in the long run "what we are hoping for is to convert CO2 in air everywhere".

You see so many great works from Lego, you can build almost everything. And we think CO2 is another space where we can do everything.

Dr Ziyun Wang School of Chemical Sciences

Kickstarted with a Marsden Fund grant and Royal Society Catalyst Fund Seeding, Ziyun is now on the lookout for private-sector funding to engage "smart people" and buy consumables to build systems similar to batteries. "The beauty of electrochemistry is that there is normally no scale-up problem."

And his catalysis model could also revolutionise the development of rechargeable aqueous zinc-ion batteries for grid-scale energy storage. "With our knowledge, we aim to design the most efficient aqueous zinc battery ever."

Describing sustainability as "the driving force" behind his research, Ziyun draws on his Chinese cultural heritage of creating harmony with nature.

"I think Māori culture has a very similar thing; we need to find a sustainability with nature," he says. "There must be a way to close the circle so that we can solve climate change or greenhouse emissions."

Transporting energy as a liquid

Few people in the cleantech space have a CV that reads like Sean Molloy's, who spent four years at the industry unicorn LanzaTech before moving on to co-found two start-ups of his own: Avertana and Ternary Kinetics.

"I love the very early stage where you start an idea and it's almost entirely without form or shape, and you have to start taking it from something quite amorphous and adding definition to it," says the University of Auckland mechanical engineering alumnus.

"I always had a strong interest in cars and environmentalism, and I guess the challenge that I was trying to answer was how you could make those two things compatible," says Sean, who, in 2020, was named a winner of a 40 Under 40 award recognising inspiring young alumni.

Although he's no longer directly involved with Avertana, which uses innovative chemistry to refine industrial waste streams into valuable minerals and chemicals, Sean says it has been "incredibly satisfying" to watch the business secure its first commercial client in China.

Along with LanzaTech's Dr Sean Simpson and Rocket Lab's Sir Peter Beck as fellow directors at Ternary Kinetics, he's now working on a bench-scale demonstration of a process that aims to transport energy as a liquid.

"You can provide energy for zero-emission electric vehicles like aeroplanes, trucks, ships and cars through all of the existing infrastructure for moving liquids around."

As its research ramps up in 2025, Ternary will be looking to hire more graduates, albeit in a market where "smart people and good ideas are free to move". This underscores the importance of continued research and development support for the cleantech sector, says Sean.

"The support that we can get from the government and from NZTE and Callaghan Innovation helps provide some basis for why New Zealand is a good place to do this."

It's a sentiment that's shared by the New Zealand Cleantech Mission, led by Callaghan Innovation and representing academia and industry, which believes that New Zealand can lead the world in developing clean technology.

"The time is ripe for New Zealand to drive a green industrial revolution," it noted in its New Zealand Cleantech Report 2024, "leveraging the excellent scientific, engineering and entrepreneurial talent that our cleantech company leaders believe we possess."

A GRADUATE'S JOURNEY

According to the New Zealand Cleantech Report 2024, New Zealand needs to educate a lot more highly versatile and technically skilled graduates like Nancy Zhou (above). The University of Auckland Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship alumna has a conjoint degree in commerce (commercial law and marketing) and engineering (with honours, in mechatronics) - a combination that gave her different career options.

"There's so much out there that I don't even know I don't know," she says. "But my studies have equipped me with a skill set to think creatively, explore different avenues and bring my ideas to life."

After three years in the workforce as a mechatronics engineer, she was hired in 2023 as an instrumentation and control engineer at OpenStar Technologies - the cleantech start-up that's raised US$12 million in seed funding for its pioneering research into harnessing fusion as a carbon-free global energy source.

"There are lots of ambitious people who work here who are very smart. It's great to be in a work environment where I'm surrounded by people like that because it really pushes me to be a better version of my professional self."

Working in the uncertainty of a start-up adds to the challenge and excitement, and while she's in a minority when it comes to gender, Nancy says "we're quite a young team, so there is a lot of awareness surrounding the gender imbalance". Nevertheless, she'd like to see more role models for women in engineering.

OpenStar also ticks another box in its quest to reduce carbon emissions and generate abundant and affordable power, says Nancy.

"It's that push to do social good, where I want everyone to have the same rights and living conditions, and the ability to live their life as any human really should."

This article first appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of Ingenio magazine.