2024 Grantees
Bluemethane (www.bluemethane.com) is a UK start-up aimed at harvesting methane from wastewater treatment plants and other aquatic sources. Its project will take place at the United Utilities wastewater treatment plant in southern England. It uses mechanical agitation of wastewater in a Bluemethane-developed machine called Harvey to extract the high-concentration methane so it can be recovered and used as biogas. CIEIF’s funding will enable a comprehensive EIA, including ongoing monitoring, covering all potential impacts of this technique. It does so under a detailed framework Bluemethane developed that will be applicable, with some adaptations, to other aquatic methane capture projects in the future.
Exaquest Carbon (https://exaquest.org) is a California nonprofit organization founded in 2020 with the mission to develop open-source technologies for scalable and cost-effective carbon dioxide removal (CDR). It developed a method – “BioSink”- which involves collecting waste dead wood and mechanically lowering it to a depth of 800 ft in the ocean. In minutes, the hydrostatic pressure at that depth causes the wood to become waterlogged and then sink on its own thousands of feet to the seafloor below. Once at the seafloor, carbon in the wood stays out of contact with the atmosphere for more than 1,000 years. The huge abyssal plains of the ocean floor are up 12,000 feet deep and remote from human activity. CIEIF’s grant will allow Exaquest to conduct a detailed predictive EIA of the potential localized impacts to be used for a permit application to the EPA. This will include two trips for collecting and analyzing ocean floor sediments, marine biology, water chemistry, and other parameters at the proposed sinking location, 140 miles off the Southern California coast.
Floating Island International (www.floatingislandinternational.com). FII is an established Montana company with systems to clean freshwater ecosystems, which now seeks to remove methane from dam reservoirs and other aquatic sources. It has developed a system that prevents methane emissions being generated by nutrient-impaired freshwater and captures dissolved methane before it enters the atmosphere. Behind many typical hydroelectric dams, which abruptly halt the natural flow of water, organic sediments build up in the reservoir and oxygen is depleted as the sediments decay. This results in anoxic conditions, thus allowing methanogens to generate biogenic methane. Leveraging FII’s experience with water/air circulation pumps and gas and nutrient capturing, they seek to perfect methane removal in a field test in the Bighorn Reservoir behind Yellowtail Dam, near Fort Smith, Montana. CIEIF funding will support a detailed predictive EIA involving potential impacts on fisheries, nutrients, oxygenation, public safety, and other concerns in order to obtain necessary permits from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and other affected agencies.
If you are interested in applying for a 2024 grant, see Guidelines for Grant Applications.