Sustainable development

MBD's Agri Business manager Tony St Clair and managing director Andrew Lawson at the Algal Research & Development Facility official opening at James Cook University.

As both a substantial consumer of energy and a major supplier of coal, we need to work on minimising our carbon emissions while also helping our customers to reduce theirs.

We are constantly looking for innovative ways to reduce our emissions, and that is why we have invested in MBD energy, a company that is developing technology with the potential to provide large-scale commercial and sustainable solutions to three of the world’s most critical issues: the availability, security and affordability of bio-oil; the production of nutritious meal for use in livestock and aquaculture; and, of particular importance to us, carbon sequestration.

MBD’s hybrid CO₂capture and algal synthesiser process, which is currently in the demonstration phase, injects captured flue-gases into a wastewater growth medium, housed in plastic membranes. This allows for the rapid growth of an oil-rich algal biomass that may be harvested continuously to produce nutritious animal feed and oil suited to the production of a variety of bio-resins, plastics and transport fuels, including large quantities of bio-diesel.

The technology is economically scaleable and has applications across numerous industries, including the generation of electrical power.

This innovation has been recognised by the Australian federal and Queensland state governments through funding. The company has signed formal agreements to deploy its technology, at pilot demonstration scale, with three major CO₂emitters – the Tarong, Loy Yang and Eraring power stations which, combined, account for 23% of Australia’s installed coal-fired power generating capacity.