Reepel was set up to provide enabling solutions for food, waste remediation, decarbonisation, and upcycling of co-products by leveraging powerful technologies and partnerships enabling synergistically powerful outcomes.
These technologies increase productivity, which enable 50-75% reduction in production and downstream separation costs, thereby ensuring a high-quality, low-cost product. Furthermore, using our proprietary algal bioreactor technology, we can capture CO2, utilise co-products from various industries as media, and generate higher value products adhering to a cascading circular economy approach.
We strongly believe that sustainability can only be effective if it is financially rewarding. Leveraging our core technologies , working with best-in-class endusers, we provide unique decarbonisation and upcycling solutions for endusers.
We have partnered with specialist companies in various sectors to generate:
1. High-quality net-zero carbon animal feed - by utilising wastewater from dairies, greenhouses, vertical farms, breweries, distilleries, and other food and beverage industries as feedstock , CO2 or flue gas as additional feedstock (performing decarbonisation ), and generate tailored animal feed.
2. High-quality low carbon sustainable fertiliser - by treating wastewater from anaerobic digesters (typically termed as centrate/digestate) to recover nutrients, and sequestering CO2, to generate bioavailable fertiliser which is rich in Phosphorous and Potassium.
Since 2019, animal feed and fertiliser prices have increased significantly. These costs have doubled or tripled in certain locations, with limited availability.
Due to a significant increase in productivity for our bioreactor technology, we are able to provide decentralised solutions which reduce logistical emissions.
Since we import significant amounts of fertiliser and feed, the ability to produce these highly relevant products in a sustainable yet inexpensive manner, whilst remediating conventionally assumed liabilities, is a game changer.
We have developed and are refining technologies and approaches that increase and enhance uptake of fertiliser and feed for plants and animals using what we term as : Desai Artificial Lichen/ Desai Microbubble Scaffold.
This ensures that better outcomes and products are achieved by using lesser feed and fertiliser.
We have also developed technologies for Greenhouses, Conventional Farms, and have our own proprietary indoor vertical farming system.
We are also developing chemical-free approaches to pest management in indoor systems.
The UK 2050 Net Zero plan requires a combination of technology and commercial partnerships described above.
We combine the best of breed process, energy, water, biological and photonic technology to accelerate growth of plants, algae and other organisms - increasing cell density/yield, improving consistency, controlling unwanted organisms and using "lowest cost" energy using minimal water .
Reepel strategy focusses to produce crops and specialist cultivars at a low cost and solutions for climate change including waste up-conversion and carbon capture for production of feeds and/or fertiliser. We deliver the lowest production costs per kg product of any comparable technology.
Unlike the majority of our competitors, we have deep-rooted expertise and knowhow founded in chemical, biological, process, and photonic engineering. We have access to strong globally patented technology, coupled with groundbreaking IP developed in-house to provide a technology-rich portfolio.
In this section, we describe the various products and technologies we have developed for the Agritechnology sector.
Conventional Farming and Greenhouses/Soil-based Controlled Environment Agriculture(CEA)
Conventional farms require significant amounts of water and fertiliser but this is required to obtain high levels of yield/productivity.
Irrigation and fertigation are approaches utilised to enhance productivity in soil-based farms. We have developed a novel approach , known as Desai Microgation which exploits ability to target specific nutrients to the root zone and enhance nutrient and water uptake for plants. Reepel Microgation systems are scalable and tested with multiple varieties.
Our approaches can be aggressively used in closed systems such as greenhouses and CEA systems to significantly enhance growth rates and improved productivity. With increased production rates, the major benefit is a reduced cost per kg for produce.
Vertical Farming
Vertical Farming is the ability to grow plants in a controlled pest-free environment. This technique involves applying multiple levels of individual hydroponic/aeroponic trays. Vertical Farming has several advantages.
It can be used to grow
1. valuable crops
2. herbs/spices/ leafy vegetables with controllable taste, texture, and colour
3. valuable pharmacologically active biologics derived from plants
4. unconventional plants not endemic to the region
It, however, suffers from one major disadvantage , which is cost. High operating costs have led to problems with several vertical farming companies. Our advanced technologies have been able to significantly reduce this cost , which leads to Reepel's integrated proprietary vertical farming system and with a specialist aquaculture partner, an integrated modified-aquaponics system. Reepel has demonstrated significant increases in productivity for various crops and systems, which are able to decreases costs significantly for operations, making some products viable to be produced using vertical farming technology. Complete control in the vertical farming system ensures high quality products produced with specific tastes and textures. We have partnered with sustainable renewable energy suppliers who can provide an array of appropriate options to provide net-zero food production systems. We have R&D facilities in the UK and the UAE with plans for projects with partners in these two countries.
Desai-Zimmerman Algal Bioreactor (DZ-ABR) Technology for Enhanced Production, Downstream Separation, & Disinfection
The background technology , DZFO , was developed to produce ultra-low cost microbubbles in our R&D company by Dr. Desai and Prof. Zimmerman.
Reepel has then developed proprietary bioreactors, termed as Desai-Zimmerman Algal Bioreactors - DZ-ABRs. These combine multiple proprietary unit operations developed by Desai and Zimmerman to provide amongst the most operationally intensive and capitally efficient bioreactors available globally. Desai and his team have developed scaled one pot reactors, applying groundbreaking technology to collapse operational costs. Combination of
1. enhanced production by increased mass transfer,
2. near-isothermal in situ product removal for enhanced product recovery and negation of metabolic inhibition,
3. ultra-low-cost solid separation using novel flotation systems - Desai-Zimmerman Flotation or Desai Foam Flotation.
4. 5-7 log disinfection using activated radicals
We use the following approaches to reduce operational costs.
We can utilise these reactors for multiple approaches individually or applied together:
1. capture CO2 and upcycle to produce multiple products.
2. recover nutrients from wastewater to produce various products
3. continuously extract biomass or biological products to ensure high production rates and low-cost extraction
Our technology coupled with partnerships with producers in various sectors enables cutting edge solutions to lower production costs for enduser products such as fertilisers , biologics, or feed.
Field grown crops and soil-based systems can greatly benefit from Reepel Technology
Advanced bioreactor and downstream separation technology for carbon dioxide remediation with conversion to animal feed products or fertiliser additive;
Reepel is already the lowest energy per kg grow platform globally. It is partnering with energy companies for integration of geothermal hot water for heating, cooling, & generate electrical power
Remediiate are at an advanced stage of piloting algae to feed with commercial partner Simec Atlantis. Reepel is the main algal reactor provider for the project.
