Grants and Contributions

Enedym is a Canadian company at the cutting edge of electric motors and controls. Its proprietary technology will revolutionize the deployment of electric motors in clean energy production, transportation and industrial drives. The company’s patented Switched Reluctance Motor (SRM) technology offers robust, highly reliable and low-cost solutions to many sectors from clean energy production, to transportation, to industrial applications. SRMs do not use permanent magnets, which are sensitive to operating temperature and require rare earth materials with their associated challenges in global supply chains.
The technology will be demonstrated first in wind energy applications, through a partnership with windmill operators, manufacturers and installers. It will validate its robustness and reliability in the control of the wind pitch turbine blades, considered a harsh environment and where operational reliability is critical. The increased reliability of wind turbines significantly cuts GHG emissions by displacing fossil fuel generated electricity with clean energy from existing and future installations. The potential use of these motors in other sectors is enormous offering substantial climate change benefits.

RECIRCUIT has developed and patented an innovative, efficient and economically viable process for recycling critical and strategic materials (CSMs) from printed circuit boards (PCBs). Thanks to pilot plant development, this process will be refined and optimized. By tapping into the urban mine, the construction here in Montreal of the first 5000 Tm/year commercial plant will aim to recover the PCI discarded and reclaimed by existing networks to revalue the SCMs using a low-GHG hydrometallurgical process.

Thanks to SDTC, RECIRCUIT will eventually commercialize its process to show that, with its vision, it is possible to bring as much of the SCM recovered from PCI into the circular economy as possible, so that it can be reintroduced into the production chain worldwide.

Thanks to a very high extraction efficiency rate (95%), RECIRCUIT is pioneering the use of hydrometallurgy to recycle low- and medium-grade PCI in order to extract SCMs. This innovative process counteracts the landfilling or export to certain developing countries of this electronic waste, while preserving the environment and the health of workers and citizens alike.

With its innovative insect-derived solution, Entosystem puts nature at nature's service to reduce the carbon footprint of conventional agriculture. In response to a broken food system, Entosystem will demonstrate its process in an efficient and rapid circular economy within its commercial plant, gradually increasing the transformation of imposing quantities of organic matter into a high-quality protein source and organic fertilizer.

EMS’s Crop Sense technology enables crop producers to track water, fertilizer and carbon across the broad acres of farmland that make up the world’s breadbaskets. The Crop Sense is a revolutionary soil sensor that agronomists and farmers can use where they wish, and for as long as they wish to answer the questions that keep them up at night. EMS’s decision support system links seamless with today’s farm management systems enabling producers to optimize food production while minimizing greenhouse gas emission and fertilizer runoff. In partnership with SDTC, EMS is building tomorrows soil sensors that will form a key component of the sustainable agriculture technology stack needed to reduce greenhouse gasses from production, while maintaining farm profitability and production capacity.

Cobric proprietary High Temperature Metal Recovery technology (HTMR) is designed to recycle of Electric Arc Furnace Dust (EAFD) generated by Steel Mill Industry. The process is based on thermo-separation of zinc from other metal components present in the feedstock. Typical application for HTMR is Zinc recovery from raw materials such as Electric Arc Furnace Dust, Zinc dross, Zinc ash and other secondary Zn sources. The technology is in tune with Canadian green industry initiatives to develop and demonstrate of new sustainable recycling technologies to deal with climate change, clean air, clean water and clean soil challenges.
The technology has the potential to demonstrate significant and quantifiable environmental and economic benefits for Steel Mills who generate zinc bearing EAF Dust. The technology will provide Steel Mills with a new alternative to reuse/recycle the EAF Dust on site or in close vicinity of the Steel Mill Production which is currently not available.
The technology has very high potential to be an attractive opportunity for its end users ( steel mills and recycling service companies). Successful demonstration and completion of the HTMR prototype technology will provide a blueprint to replicate the process elsewhere in the ready world market.

Their technology opens the door to reducing the weight of vehicles and aircraft – which leads to enhanced fuel economies and reduced GHG emissions.

Every year Canada produces an estimated 725,000 tonnes of E-Waste. Excir Works from Calgary has a proven, efficient, environmentally-friendly process to recycle the gold and metals from electronic waste. Their technology can recover +99% of gold as well as other precious, and base metals, from E-waste and similar waste streams, such as catalytic converters.

In this project, Excir Works will engineer, design, and manufacture a commercial pilot unit (a.k.a. plant) for the Excir hydrometallurgy technology. The plant will be capable of delivering high throughput processing of E-Waste and validating the technology at commercial scale.

Excir will also complete crucial pre-commercial and commercial scale R&D to ensure the technology works at higher scales and with various types of E-Waste, to lower the risks of scaling up and deploying the Excir commercial prototype.

e-Zinc is a zinc-air battery company based in Toronto. The company’s energy storage system can be up to 80 percent less expensive than comparable lithium-ion systems for long-duration applications. Importantly, its energy storage system can operate in cold and hot climates and is made of abundant and recyclable materials.

The project will be hosted at Eurus Energy America Corporation’s (EEAC) Bull Creek wind facility in Borden County, Texas (Bull Creek). The pilot program will store excess wind generation capacity in the e-Zinc battery system at Bull Creek. EEAC can then use the stored energy to power buildings at the local facility. e-Zinc’s system is expected to store power for 24 hours, an order of magnitude longer than typical batteries, and is better suited to the intermittency of wind generation than typical batteries. The pilot project will deliver firsthand experience with e-Zinc’s disruptive technology, and potentially lead to future manufacturing, supply chain and commercial opportunities between TTCI and e-Zinc. Additionally, TTCI will apply its unique capabilities to support installation, integration, and system O&M.

The strong pressure to increase greenhouse production in Canada faces the risk of increasing fossil fuel consumption and associated GHGs. It is important to put in place solutions that will support food self-sufficiency with new, more eco-responsible production approaches that enable greater profitability for growers. As part of this evolutionary approach, the rise of artificially-lit vertical farming is generating exciting new initiatives around the world. The project proposed by Ferme d'Hiver Technologie inc (FHT) and its technical and academic partners aims to set up two vertical farming production rooms and use the excess heat produced by lighting these rooms to heat an adjacent greenhouse. This innovative project, which has never been carried out anywhere else in the world, will benefit from the dynamism of a start-up company, the expertise of its multidisciplinary team and the experience of a 35-year veteran of greenhouse fruit and vegetable production. The project will demonstrate the validity of the approach and propel Canada to the forefront of cutting-edge sustainable development technology.

Future Fields is an Edmonton-based biotech company that produces the most cost-effective and sustainable recombinant proteins in the world. The company has developed a novel insect-based expression platform that circumvents the challenges associated with legacy systems. In just 2 years, they have already launched 3 different products that are tailored to the needs of the cellular agriculture industry, a new and exciting field where traditional agriculture products, like milk or meat, can be created by culturing cells instead of raising animals.