Engineering team's novel Capstone Design technology backed by venture capitalist
A business pitch to reduce plastic water bottle waste through technology that adsorbs pollutants earned a senior-year engineering team $50,000 in financial backing from a venture capitalist.
Reduce, Carbonize, Adsorb, a chemical engineering team’s Capstone Design project, is the winner of this year’s Palihapitiya Venture Creation Fund Award sponsored by Chamath Palihapitiya (BASc '99, electrical engineering), founder and CEO of Social Capital.
Besides the money split equally among team members Rachel Blanchard, Nicole Howard, Kris Ma and Steven Vilcacundo Molina, the award includes mentorship, training, and advice from successful entrepreneurs.
Reduce, Carbonize, Adsorb team members from left Nicole Howard, Rachel Blanchard, Kris Ma and Steven Vilcacundo Molina.
Frustrated by the high number of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) single-use water bottles ending up in either landfill or being shipped overseas, the senior-year team, supervised by Tiz Mekonnen, a chemical engineering professor, looked at solutions to the issue.
In its written application for the Palihapitiya award, the students said PET bottle use increased from 300 billion in 2000 to 480 billion in 2016. Of those single-use water bottles, only 29 per cent are recycled with many of those making their way back into the system of 71 per cent non-recycled single-use bottles.
Members described the solution they have created to eliminate water bottles from ending up in landfill as a novel and high-performing thermal decomposition process that converts PET products into an activated carbon product.
Through testing, the students said the activated carbon byproduct has been validated as an effective adsorbent for the treatment of dye contaminated wastewater and shows potential for use in other applications such as carbon dioxide capture due to its excellent surface properties. 
"The global market for activated carbon totals US $4.72 billion per year with a compound annual growth rate of 17.5 per cent," said Howard. "Approximately 45 per cent of the market is towards wastewater treatment with another 45 per cent towards air purification.
Team members are excited to have the funding needed to continue working on their technology to help divert PET plastic bottles from the garbage and profit from selling the resulting byproduct.
“With the Palihapitiya Venture Creation Fund Award, we are honoured to be able to further validate our design at a larger scale and investigate partnership opportunities to help us move towards implementation,” the students said.
*Banner photo by Polina Tankilevitch of Pexels
