Catalyst Agri-Innovations Society
The Catalyst Agri-Innovations Society provides research resources that advance the environmental and economic sustainability of agriculture to its project partners around the world. The overarching goal of the organization is to create multi-faculty, multi-disciplinary, parallel study facilities to address input and output streams of farming. Catalyst Agri-Innovations Society aims to establish zero waste agriculture by first addressing the issue of animal manure.
Zero Waste Agriculture: The Future for Food
Catalyst Agri-Innovations Society uses anaerobic digestion technology to produce biogas and fertilizer from animal manure. The fertilizer is then used to grow an aquatic grass called duckweed, which cleans water for reuse while ingesting large quantities of CO2. The operators ferment the duckweed to separate the protein and sugar compounds to be used in biochemical feedstocks.
TEDx Talk by Chris Bush of the Catalyst Agri-Innovations Society: Green Energy
Major Accomplishments
- In 2010, Catalyst Agri-Innovations Society was involved in the construction of the first on-farm anaerobic digester in British Columbia called Catalyst Power (now Fraser Valley Biogas); the facility was the first in North America to sell the gas to utility companies, rather than using it to make electricity
- In 2015, Catalyst Agri-Innovations Society supported the installation of the first nutrient recovery solution for an on-farm digester in Canada (Seabreeze Farm)