The entrepreneurship ecosystem at Waterloo Engineering nurtures promising ideas into thriving enterprises. In our weekly Founder Fuel series, we look at new ventures and how they have benefited from that crucial early support.
Nicole Howard, Rachel Blanchard, Steven Vilcacundo Molina and Kris Ma (all BASc ’22, chemical engineering) set out to develop a Capstone project that could improve the world. They targeted the mountain of PET water bottles discarded every day, developing a novel thermochemical process to break down that plastic waste and convert it into an important commodity: activated carbon.
Activated carbon is a product widely used in the textile industry to remove dyes from wastewater. It’s also increasingly sought for its carbon-capture capabilities. As the results revealed, the activated carbon created by Howard and her teammates outperforms what’s currently on the market, which is made from either environmentally destructive coal or expensive biomass. That creates big wins for the planet — and a seriously compelling business case.
Busy months lie ahead to get their fledgling venture — Reduce, Carbonize, Adsorb — off the ground, launch bench-scale testing and start hunting for the next round of funding. But the idea of creating technology that could achieve so much good is a powerful incentive.
Go to Creating carbon-capture technology from plastic waste for the full story.