FLEXIBUSTER™
- Pre-Seed
The FLEXIBUSTER™ is an award-winning and patented waste-to-energy appliance, allowing sustainable urban communities to process their own organic waste on-site while harvesting valuable electricity, heat, water and fertilizer in return. Waste becomes fuel, and GHG emissions from landfill and waste transportation to centralized processors become a thing of the past.
SEaB Energy’s FLEXIBUSTER™ is a patented and award-winning waste-to-energy appliance that allows sustainable urban communities to process their own organic waste directly on-site, and harvest valuable electricity, heat, fertilizer and water in return. An independent study has shown that while doing so, each 1,000 tons of food waste processed with the FLEXIBUSTER™ offsets 385 tons of CO2e compared to conventional disposal methods such as landfill, without taking into account additional carbon offset from reducing diesel consuming waste transportation to centralized processors.
To accomplish all of this, the FLEXIBUSTER™ uses a biological process called anaerobic digestion (AD), which is packaged in a fully automated and containerized system that is compact, quick to transport and install, and easy to operate without requiring expert knowledge. Inside, organic waste is broken down into re-usable components, without consuming any external resources or producing any non-valuable waste in the process. The electricity and heat can be directly used on-site as stable, reproducible and continuous sustainable energy sources. The nutrient-rich fertilizer is a high-quality organic product that may be used to support local agriculture in the setting of a circular economy, or sold at the market for additional revenue.
Apart from electricity, heat and fertilizer, the FLEXIBUSTER™ collects the water content from the organic waste and releases this as a grey water output stream. Some sites may choose to use this output stream directly for grey water purposes, e.g. flushing toilets or irrigation of plants and vegetables, and thus reduce the use of clean, drinkable water for non-drinking purposes. For other sites, the FLEXIBUSTER™ may be extended with an additional filtration unit that further processes the grey water with clear, drinkable water as a result. The FLEXIBUSTER™ thus becomes a localized drinkable water source with a reliable and unlimited supply wherever organic waste is produced.
All communities produce waste and require energy and water. The fact that large amounts of energy and water are stored within organic waste is well known, and yet the convention still is to dispose of our waste via expensive and carbon-intensive methods while bringing our resources in via other, often equally costly and carbon emitting routes. The FLEXIBUSTER™ aims to be the “missing link”, solving three problems at once: overloaded waste disposal networks in urban environments, increased urge for sustainable alternatives to challenging and/or expensive resource supply, and high carbon emissions from conventional waste disposal and resource supply methods.
The FLEXIBUSTER™ was taken to market in 2015, and has since then been shown to be a perfect localized waste processing solution and sustainable energy source for a range of customers including hypermarkets, hospitals, large offices in urban settings (e.g. Fortune 50 corporation in central Manhattan, New York), business parks, university campuses and more. All current FLEXIBUSTER™ sites profit from reduced energy costs, reduced waste collection costs, reduced carbon footprint and local supply of resources such as fertilizer and water, validating the idea behind the technology and demonstrating its potential impact on the sustainability of communities world-wide.
The direct benefits of the FLEXIBUSTER™ are for the site or community that operates the system. These are benefits in terms of finance (the system has an average payback period of 3-5 years, after which all waste processing and resource generation off-set the costs for the conventional waste disposal and resource supply), environment (reduced carbon footprint and sustainable energy generation to adhere to sustainability objectives) and stability (reduced dependence on waste collection network, electrical grid, etc.). On a larger scale, the FLEXIBUSTER™ serves the wider community by reducing garbage traffic load and reducing the carbon footprint of our waste cycle.
Tracking sales activity per country, local manufacturing partners and the growth rate of our global customer base and network of agents and re-sellers. - Global company presence.
Monitoring the waste processing and output streams of installed FLEXIBUSTER™ systems through the remote monitoring capabilities of the automated control system. - Achieving a 40% share of specific micro-AD markets (in terms of processed waste and energy generation).
Monitoring the number of sites piloting new or site-specific developments, such as the liquid digestate post-processor to output drinkable water, in addition to ‘standard’ FLEXIBUSTER™ sites and sales activity. - Continuation of innovation and development.
- Urban
- Rural
- Suburban
- Europe and Central Asia
- US and Canada
- Biotechnology (genetic engineering, new biomolecules)
- Digital systems (machine learning, control systems, big data)
- Energy & nuclear engineering
- Environmental engineering
- Mechanical engineering and hardware
With SEaB Energy, we managed for the first time to pack the process of anaerobic digestion in a standardized, automated, modular and mobile piece of technology that allows true decentralized waste-to-energy processing. Though anaerobic digestion has been utilized to harvest resources from waste for many years at larger scale, the FLEXIBUSTER™ for the first time brings this process directly to the waste producers, allowing them to extract the valuable resources themselves and use these resources on the spot. The containerized packaging of the FLEXIBUSTER™ makes it quick and easy to transport and install, anywhere in the world.
Where there are people, there will be waste. With the FLEXIBUSTER™, we aim to bring waste processing to the masses in the same way the Personal Computer brought processing power into our homes. Our solution allows sustainable communities to harvest their own waste and extract valuable resources from that waste, significantly reducing their dependence on waste disposal networks or external resources such as the electrical grid. Because of its robust and easy-to-operate design, the FLEXIBUSTER™ can be operated and maintained by the community for the community, without requiring expert knowledge.
The FLEXIBUSTER™ is designed to be as small and robust as possible. To this end, the technology is fully packaged in standard shipping containers, allowing quick and easy transportation, installation and stacking of units to further reduce the footprint. Being fully automated and having remote monitoring capabilities, the system is easily integrated in existing waste disposal efforts for single sites or on community scale. On average, the FLEXIBUSTER™ pays itself back in 3-5 years, after which the system continues to offset local waste disposal costs and carbon emissions while producing free-of-charge sustainable energy, water and fertilizer.
- 9 (Commercial)
- For-Profit
- United Kingdom
We took the FLEXIBUSTER™ to market in 2015 and have since then secured a number of sales and exports in the UK, mainland Europe, the US and India, either directly or through our global network of agents and re-sellers with local market knowledge. The result is a profitable company with a steep sales growth curve, continuously expanding network of partners and recurring income from long-term maintenance and software contracts, allowing the company to be financially sustained during intense efforts towards global scaling. In addition, we continue to seek external funding and support for technological development, innovation and challenging pilot installations. Through programs and initiatives such as MIT’s SOLVE, we continue to actively seek out the partnerships and opportunities that are necessary to introduce the world to their disrupting and patented waste-to-energy technology on a large scale.
We consider our main competitors to be the conventional waste disposal and processing networks. For the FLEXIBUSTER™ to succeed in being a disruptive alternative to convention, an important limiting factor is the willingness of the public to move away from the standard definition and concept of waste, and start to appreciate waste as a valuable fuel and source of electricity, heat, water and fertilizer. For this, we rely on early adapters that are willing to serve as pilot sites to prove that the FLEXIBUSTER™ works independent of location, environment, climate characteristics and other site-specific parameters, anywhere in the world.
- 5+ years
- 3-6 months
- 6-12 months
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- Technology Access
- Water Treatment
- Water Sourcing
- Food Processing
- Net-zero Carbon
We believe that localized waste-to-energy has a key role to play in the global challenges to reduce waste and carbon emissions as well as the development of sustainable communities. The FLEXIBUSTER™ is designed to be the “missing link” making localized waste-to-energy possible and accessible, but to achieve this, we need the support from initiatives such as SOLVE to build the partnerships that are required to overcome factors that limit large-scale acceptance. Through the expertise and resources of SOLVE, we hope to find much-needed support for pilots and technological development that allows the FLEXIBUSTER™ to live up to its disruptive potential.
G3 Systems Ltd., NOW process & Flow Technologies UK Ltd, Principal Technology Inc., Amber Integrated Controls and Automation Ltd., Suretank Group Ltd.
No direct competitors.
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CEO & Co-founder