Geoffrey Bekavac, third-year chemical engineering student, member of the AltaCarbon team.
(Edmonton) Cleaning with dirt? That's what AltaCarbon's mission is: to convert petroleum coke, which is mostly considered as a waste byproduct, into activated carbon for cleaning in a variety of applications.
On January 26, AltaCarbon presented in the Energy New Venture Competition held at the University of Calgary and took the top spot in the concept stream and were awarded $7,500.
AltaCarbon is an eHUB startup that first started its journey with Alvin Xu (ECE Alumnus 2012) presenting his idea at the eHUB SPARK 2014.
"I found out about AltaCarbon at eHUB SPARK and I contact Alvin afterwards and I've been involved in the business side of things since then," said Geoffrey Bekavac, third-year chemical engineering student.
AltaCarbon is a clean-tech company developing a patented platform process that can convert petroleum coke, the main byproduct of oil sands processing, into filtration material called activated carbon. Activated carbon can be used for applications such as water treatment, air filtration, and mercury capture from flue gas emission.
"Petroleum coke has no real value to oil companies. They are using it to filter tailings for example, but our process is more efficient like a microwave rather than an oven," explained Bekavac, "right now we're working on validating the technology on a larger scale."
AltaCarbon have shown the technology to be successful at the gram-scale and are working to scale up to kilograms and then tonnes.
"Activated carbon is used by many plants and Canada and it can be made from coconut or wood, but making it from petroleum coke, an unwanted byproduct, can help the environment and we hope it also helps improve Alberta's image," Bekavac said.
AltaCarbon has also won eHUB's Triffo Prize in Innovation and the 2015 Investment Pitch Competition hosted by the Hong Kong Canada Business Association. With the third win at Energy New Venture Competition, the company is in good shape so far with $15,000 from awards.
"I extended my degree by reducing my course load so that I would have more time to work on AltaCarbon. I'm also a competitive kayaker so it can be pretty tough sometimes," Bekavac he said.
"As for what I'm going to the in the future, well, I'd like to go the entrepreneurial route with AltaCarbon and I plan for it to be my main focus if we can secure the funding we need to develop the company," Bekavac said.