ongen is a multi-disciplinary research and development group working and collaborating nationally and internationally wih industry, research institutions and government agencies on novel use, and reuse, of regional resources to create new business opportunities for sustainable development.

Our work includes:

• mitigation of industrial off-gas CO₂
• bioenergy
• bioprospecting microalgae for commercially valuable bioproducts
• natural antioxidant, antibacterial, anticancer, antifungal and antiviral agents
• recovery of critical minerals by bioleaching
• capture and repurposing on-site industrial waste energy
• new systems to protect drinking water for remote communities and households
• life-cycle assessment (LCA) to analyze the impact of new products and new practices
• productivity and environmental impacts from using battery electric vehicles

More information on our active projects and members of the team
can be found by scrolling down.

Stress from extreme and fluctuating environmental conditions that microalgae around the world endure makes them of interest in terms of potential beneficial protective biochemical compounds.

We have a unique sampling program that is collecting microalgae from a wide-range of water bodies that experience a variety of stresses. For example, microalgae growing in abandoned mine tailing ponds, other industrial sites and effluent treatment facilities.

Sampling is conducted throughout the year in order to assess the impact of seasonal variations on microalgae activity.

So far over 400 distinctly different water bodies, both impacted and non-impacted by human activities, have been sampled and analyzed.

Approximately 1.8 kg of CO₂ are consumed to produce 1 kg of microalgae cell biomass (dry weight).

We are exploring, therefore, the significant potential of greenhouse gas mitigation of CO₂ within off-gasses of wide range of different industries (from very large to small), by using it to stimulate enhanced microalgae growth and valuable byproduct production.

Lipids (fats and oils) naturally produced by microalgae can, just like those in used cooking oils and plants such as rapeseed, be easily transesterified to form biodiesel.

It has been estimated that if microalgae are used to produce biodiesel, less than 3% of the USA's total cropping area would be sufficient to meet 50% of the country's annual transport fuel needs.

A focus of our work is microalgal production of compounds that exhibit high activity against microorganisms, such as bacteria.

There is a continuous need to discover new antibacterial agents and novel mechanisms of action due to development of resistance to antibiotics in current clinical use.

Our extracts have been effective against both gram negative and gram positive bacteria, such as Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium found in the human respiratory tract and on the skin. It is not always pathogenic (disease causing), but it can be a cause of skin infections, respiratory disease and food poisoning.

We are looking at recovery of health benefical compounds (nutraceuticals) from microalgae that exist in stressed ecosystems.

Environmental stresses that these microalgae successfully endure makes them of interest as to protect themselves they produce compounds, such as antioxidants, that can be used by us.

We are exploring both their production and their application as natural replacements for potentially carcinogenic synthetic compounds, such as for skin protection against the sun's harmful UV rays.

A goal is regional commercial production of high value nutraceutical products to strengthen economic and societal returns.

An exciting development of our work is bioprospected microalgal production of compounds that exhibit significant anticancer activity in human cell lines.

Our microalgal extracts with antibacterial activity have been tested on both non-cancer and cancer human cell lines.

Very importantly, after exposure to our microalgal extracts, non-cancer human cells remained seemingly unaffected. Whereas viable cancer cells numbers are very significantly reduced.

The greatest impact was on a fast dividing cancerous ovarian cell line, the type of cells typically treated with chemotherapy (a technique that also destroys non-cancer cells).

We are interested in enhanced energy security and reduced fossil fuel dependence for industry through developing new on-site concepts to recover and reuse otherwise waste energy.

A major target is to tap into often neglected low-grade heat in various process water and gas streams on industrial sites, recovery of which can save money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

One goal is to use heat pumps to upgrade this heat and make it suitable for replacing existing heaters (e.g., natural gas or electrcity) used to provide process stream pre-heating.

A similar approach can be also used to provide space heating and/or cooling in on-site office, workshop and laboratory buildings.

We have developed life-cycle assessment (LCA) models as tools to analyze the impact of new products and new practices, such as battery electric vehicles (BEV) and automated equipment into underground mine sites.

The models assess the impacts of resulting process changes along with regional and geographical variables on short and long-term sustainability to be quantified.

This work provides the industry with a third project assessment that complements improvements in productivity and safety that result from introducing electric vehicles and automation - improved environmental impacts.

Every year advisories are issued to not extract water from lakes and rivers for drinking. This is particularly so for remote communities, such as First Nations, mine camps and individual households, not connected to municipal water supplies.

One possible cause is Cylindrospermopsin (CYN), one of the common cyanobacterial toxins, that targets protein and glutathione synthesis in hepatocytes, and may cause fever, diarrhea, hepatomegaly and kidney damage.

To tackle this problem, we are developing a combination of germicidal UV and photocatalytic activity to simultaneuosly kill bacteria and destroy a range of organic toxins.

The goal is a compact, economic and low maintenance design that can be used to protect public health in isolated and remote communities.

Critical minerals, mainly nickel, antimony, bismuth, cobalt, graphite, lithium, manganese, platinum group elements, scandium, rare-earth metals and vanadium, are key for economic development, not least for battery electric vehicles.

We are interested in recovery of these vital minerals, in particular metals, by microalgal bioleaching from industrial wastewaters and mining waters.

Microalgae can bind metals at 10% of their biomass with high selectivity and have no toxic waste generation. As a consequnce, they could be used for metals recovery in waters that contain relatively high or low concentrations.