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Gloucestershire Business News

Stonehouse eco business secures £500,000 government funding

Stonehouse based sustainable materials manufacturer Adaptavate has been awarded a £500,000 development project to take CO2 from air and polluting industries and lock it into the biomaterials of the future.

Co-funded by Innovate UK, the UK's Innovation agency, the project looks to further develop techniques to take CO2 from the atmosphere and other CO2 emitting processes, such as lime and cement. Adaptavate's focus is to lock this into construction products, such as their award winning Breathaboard technology.

"This is a really exciting project at a pivotal point for Adaptavate. It enables us to grow the team and technical partnerships at a really exciting time in our industry," said Tom Robinson, founder of Adaptavate.

"It affirms Adaptavate and the partner universities as leading the way in CO2 sequestration in building materials and industrial processes - helping us reach ambitious CO2 targets that are being set by governments and industrial bodies".

Mr Robinson explains that the project is asking the question; can the waste of these materials be used as soil nutrients for use in agriculture, to grow more crops and bio-materials, completing a circular economy approach to construction bio-materials?

He said that ground up construction waste will be compared to the digestate from Anaerobic Digestion (AD) of the same material. The AD process also generates synthetic gas, predominantly Methane. Here a second and third nutrient loop can be exploited as the Methane created can be burnt to create electricity to run the factory, creating CO2 , which can sequestered in the curing of new material.

Jeff Ive, technical director at Adaptavate added: "Environmentally positive solutions are not one size fits all, and neither are business cases. This project will allow us to scale the next generation of bio-materials though absorbing CO2 from emitting processes all over the world through localised production models. This is a really transformative way of looking at this conservative, vertically integrated industry that is looking for a step change".

The project builds on the strong relationships that Adaptavate have built with the University of Bath and Bio composite Development Centre in York.

Professor Pete Walker, of the University of Bath and director of BRE Centre of Innovative Construction Materials said: "Personally, I am really excited to work with Adaptavate as it builds on our track record of working with this Innovative leading SME, realising the potential impact of a previous BBSRC funded project carried out in collaboration with Adaptavate.

"There is great potential is the development of genuinely low carbon, possibly even carbon neutral building materials for the mainstream industry - this is a real potential game-changing solution and we are excited to be a key part of it."

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