Trini leads project for first Sargassum-powered vehicle | Local Business

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TRINBAGONIAN scientist Dr Legena Henry, pursued her studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, where the motto “Mens et Manus”—”Mind and Hand”—reflects the belief that education should be rooted in practical application.

“The MIT campus is built on the spirit of yes, we have minds, but we have minds to solve the problems of humanity. So I feel I have learned to take science and apply it to real-world challenges,” Henry told Express Business.

Driven by this philosophy, Henry launched the world’s first vehicle powered by renewable natural gas, derived from a blend of sargassum seaweed and rum distillery wastewater, tackling several global challenges at once.

These challenges include providing renewable energy, creating inexpensive transportation fuel, ridding beaches of sargassum, and converting waste into valuable resources.

How the journey started

In 2019, Henry and her husband, Nigel, relocated from Trinidad and Tobago to Barbados.

She took on the role of lecturer in renewable energy at The University of the West Indies Cave Hill campus while he accepted a position as a data scientist at CIBC.

“I was teaching a course called Sustainable Energy Systems, which basically explains how energy systems could go from being fossil fuel-driven to renewable-driven. One day in class, while we were discussing transportation, a student raised her hand and said, ‘I am seeing all these electric vehicles around Barbados, but I cannot afford an electric car’,” Henry said.

The student’s statement resonated with her, she said, since, while searching for a vehicle during their first week on the island, she and her family had also noticed that electric cars were expensive.

By the end of the semester, Henry said, the idea was still ruminating in her mind.

“And so I pulled together five of the most talkative, dynamic students from that class. I asked the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) for funding, and we spent the summer collaborating. Together, we tried to figure out, ‘if the average person cannot afford to drive an electric car, can we create a bioenergy market, and what would it look like?’”Henry said. Their research led them to examine Brazil’s successful conversion of two-thirds of its road traffic to run on sugar cane.

Henry said due to the vast amount of sugar cane fields in Barbados, it was believed that the Caribbean island could be a “tiny Brazil” in that regard. “We started the summer with a desktop study, basically reading to understand what is happening in Barbados compared to Brazil and the second half of the summer would have been for experiments,” Henry said.

But at that juncture, they faced their first hurdle in the research. “After three weeks of reading about sugar cane and comparing Barbados with Brazil, we realised it wasn’t feasible because only six per cent of road traffic in Barbados could be powered by sugar cane because cane was on the decline in the country. There wasn’t enough,” Henry said, but by that time, the team had already met with the sugarcane breeding station in Barbados, as well as some of the rum distilleries, and obtained some of the wastewater.

sargassum revelation

Despite this initial bump the team remained driven, Henry said.

“One of the students, Brittney McKenzie, was driving home in a maxi. In Barbados they call in ‘the van’, and she saw a big mountain of sargassum, and trucks and cranes were on the beach moving off the sargassum,” Henry said and so watching out the window of the maxi that morning, the student had an epiphany.”

When McKenzie arrived on campus, she suggested to Henry that they use sargassum instead of sugar cane.

Tourism is the main economic driver in Barbados, and sargassum has been threatening to derail it, Henry said.

“Without tourists in hotel rooms in Barbados the country’s economy will suffer and so sargassum on beaches is a threat to the national economy and every day cranes move sargassum off beaches,” Henry said.

Henry said a popular hotel in Barbados pays upward of $2 million annually just to deal with the sargassum problem on its beach.

“The Crane put out $100,000 a week buying champagne, buying caviar, cheeses and bussing their tourists to a beach without sargassum on it just so they can ensure that their product is not affected. It costs a lot of money to deal with and it is a real terror,” Henry said.

Henry said the potent smell of hydrogen sulfide emitted from rotting sargassum has forced some people to relocate in Barbados and has, at times, caused the fish markets to shut down, but even with an understanding of the gravity of the sargassum problem, Henry admits she was sceptical about it as a solution to their conundrum.

“We had been discussing sugar cane for three weeks; how could we just switch to the random sargassum? But I looked at how excited and enthusiastic they were, and I didn’t want to break that,” Henry said.

And so the focus shifted to sargassum.

However, because they were so far into the school break, they did not complete the requisite pre-reading.

This ultimately saved the project.

“Now this is the moment of invention here. We already got the wastewater from the rum distilleries, so I suggested that we maybe just put them together, and she went off and she started running experiments,” Henry said.

“Usually, when you are starting a research project, you tell the students go and do a literature review on this. But we were already three weeks into the summer. We did a whole set of other literature (on Brazil and sugar cane). So I told her just go and do the experiment.

“So we did not read the articles. The journals would have told us don’t put sargassum in any biodigester because you are not going to get any energy out of it. But we didn’t read. We didn’t read so we went and did it and guess what? Energy came out of it we got a biogas from sargassum, but it was mixed with rum wastewater,” she said.

Company formed

Because of the breakthrough and the realisation that it was a viable business venture, the principal of Cave Hill Campus allowed Henry to take leave and pursue the possibilities.

The name of the company is Rum and Sargassum.

“It is a UWI Cave Hill spin-off company. We are a deep tech company based on research results we generated in the lab, and I currently have PhD projects focused on this solution,” Henry said.

“I believe in UWI for solving questions and making the region a better place,” Henry said.

One of the students is still looking at the fuel formula, Henry said.

Another is looking at sargassum itself.

They are using overhead and underwater drones to understand it, she said.

“I have one student looking at the sargassum because it comes from the ocean on the currents, the wind, the waves, the current brings it across the Atlantic you have to be able to predict your feedstock if you running a business on it,” she said.

“So we have a student just looking at that question of how to sustainably track and then harvest it in a way that makes the business sustainable,” Henry said.

A third is looking at climate change and the impact on sargassum, Henry said.

Henry said student is examining Caribbean region sargassum growth maps and climate trends to determine the challenges of harvesting sargassum over the next 15 years.

“We have to understand if we need to start farming our own sargassum if it does become this important feedstock for energy,” she said.

Sustainability at the centre

Henry said the journey started with the search for truth, not with entrepreneurship in mind, and that is the vision they intend to stay focused on.

“We are not after being rich, we are after a sustainable solution that makes sense that could demonstrate to the world if you do it sustainably it can still make you money and it could still help part of your economy. It is entrepreneurship that is for a cause,” Henry said.

“We are not just going to go in the ocean and take all of the sargassum out of it. We respect sargassum; it is a floating biomass ecosystem and we think there is a way to harvest it to ensure our great grandchildren still have sargassum as a resource for energy but also that it never arrives on a beach again because when it arrives on the beach the hotel suffers, the fishers suffer and the entire economy suffers,” she said.

Henry said that while this idea originated in Barbados, it is not meant to remain within the country’s borders, as sargassum is a global issue.

Apart from the Caribbean, sargassum has been showing up on shores in West Africa, Mexico, South America and Florida.

Henry said one of the students visited the labs at the University of San Diego (California, USA), where another Trinbagonian, Dr Odesma Dalrymple, is working.

At that lab, they were able to conduct an experiment where energy was derived from blending Pacific Ocean sargassum with beer wastewater.

And so the challenge now is convincing the world that this project is scalable.

As such Henry said they have been in discussions with venture capitalists, and the United Nation’s Private Financing Advisory Network (PFAN), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and others.

Henry said the project will help in Barbados reaching its goal of becoming fossil-fuel-free by 2030.

The project, spearheaded by Rum and Sargassum Incorporated and Supernova Lab of Future Barbados, has so far garnered more than $1 million in investments.

“This is huge low hanging fruit for the transport sector because we have 150,000 registered gas cars what have to find a new fuel by 2030. While some of those people will be able to buy electric cars, most of them may not. So, putting a kit in your car to drive on renewable gas instead of gasoline is a quick and easy solution and thus a promising business model,” she said.

The project could potentially remove 103,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually in Barbados, she estimated.

“I believe in UWI for solving questions and making the region a better place,” Henry said.

Test Drive Zero

On September 17 the world’s first vehicle powered by renewable natural gas (RNG) from sargassum seaweed, rum distillery wastewater and Blackbelly sheep manure, was launched the Guinea Plantation in St John.

The car, which belongs to the Caribbean Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (CCREE), is now being used as the flagship vehicle of the project and bears the branding “Runs on sargassum” emblazoned on the trunk.

“Barbados has pioneered a technology and an innovation that has the ability to change the way in which this entire Caribbean space treats to transportation and I want Barbados to not take that for granted,” Barbados Energy Minister Lisa Cummins said.

“Similarly, to how you can walk up to the dispenser at the gas station and get gasoline, it’s as simple as walking up to the bio-gas dispenser instead and getting our fuel,” Henry said.

“It will be the same technology as CNG in terms of the hardware. The hardware is the same as the CNG hardware, but the energy inside of it is renewable,” she said.

Henry said the team has been working with Trinidadians to install CNG kits in the cars, drawing on their technical know-how from years of experience.

The Sargassum Biofuel Research Team Summer 2019, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados were McKenzie, Karyl Pivott, Kristen Lynch, Aria Goodridge, and Joshua Austin

The current research students include Shamika Spencer, Christine Carmichael, Aria Goodridge, and Eliana Bascombe.

Apart from her husband Nigel as a director, the technical advisors for Rum and Sargassum include Felicia Cox, Dr Heidi Jack, Theo Jones, Dr Kirt St Bernard, Cynthia Cannady, Akin Sawyerr, Dr Terrell Thompson and Dr Renique Murray.

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