Carbon utilization technology from Mangrove Water Technologies has gone from a margarine container to a commercial solution in just five years. Mangrove’s innovative approach uses CO2 to turn waste-gases and saline water into valuable chemicals and reduces water use in oil and gas operations. It has the potential to simultaneously significantly reduce emissions and conserve water, leading to economic and environmental opportunities for the oil sands mining industry. Mangrove estimates an annual market of $450 million across the oil sands mining industry, with GHG reduction potential of 1.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per year by 2030. This is equivalent to the annual emissions from over 300,000 cars. In Alberta alone, it is expected to save more than 11 billion litres of water, the amount required to fill 4,400 Olympic-sized swimming pools. “What excites me is that we are treating carbon as an asset for future products, not a pollutant. We’ve been working primarily with the oil and gas sector, but the technology can be also used in the production of lithium batteries. This allows us to play in traditional and future energy economies,” said Saad Dara, Co-Founder and CEO, Mangrove Water Technologies. Supported with a $5 million investment from ERA through its Grand Challenge, the technology will now be commercially demonstrated at a Canadian Natural Resources Limited mining site in Alberta. “The Grand Challenge funding will allow us to fully commercialize our technology in Alberta and enable us to export the technology to other markets across the globe,” said Dara.
