How Microalgae Is Transforming Wastewater into Sustainable Farming Solutions

Ever wondered what happens when innovative minds tackle agricultural waste? Meet Tom Bessell, co-founder of ALBON, who's revolutionizing how we think about wastewater and soil health.

Tom joins us from Dig South to share his startup's groundbreaking approach to environmental challenges. Albon has developed proprietary photobioreactors that harness microalgae's natural ability to clean agricultural wastewater. The process removes phosphorus, nitrogen, and grease from contaminated water while simultaneously capturing atmospheric carbon. But the innovation doesn't stop there - the nutrient-rich algae is transformed through pyrolysis into biochar, a powerful soil amendment that helps farmers improve crop yields and water retention naturally.

What makes this technology particularly fascinating is its circular nature. The dirtier the wastewater, the faster the algae grows and the more nutrient-dense the resulting biochar becomes. It's a perfect example of turning a problem into an opportunity. Tom explains how their technology can help revitalize over-farmed soils by reactivating natural carbon cycles that industrial agriculture has disrupted. Currently piloting with the Sydney local government, Albon is eyeing future expansion into meat and dairy processing facilities where wastewater is especially nutrient-rich.

Tom's entrepreneurial journey offers valuable lessons in adaptation. What began as a carbon capture concept in late 2023 evolved into their current wastewater treatment model after the initial approach proved impractical. This pivot demonstrates how environmental innovation often requires flexibility and responsiveness to real-world constraints. Follow Albon's continuing development on Instagram at @albon_au or on LinkedIn to witness how this Australian startup is transforming agricultural waste streams into sustainable resources for the future of farming.

Transcript

Charleston Marketing Podcast Introduction

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to the Charleston Marketing Podcast, brought to you by the Charleston AMA and broadcasting from our friends at Charleston Media Solutions Studios. Thanks to our awesome sponsors at CMS, we get to chat with the cool folks making waves in Charleston, from business and art to hospitality and tech. These movers and shakers choose to call the Lowcountry home. They live here, work here and make a difference here. So what's their story? Let's find out together.

Speaker 2 0:29

Yes, all right, here we are, here we are, we're still here folks Totally fine Live streaming at Dig South. Mike Compton here, president of Roomba Advertising.

Speaker 1 0:40

Oh, you want me to look at this camera now.

Speaker 2 0:41

That's fine, I'm here with Stephanie. Now you're going to have to go to camera two. Ah there you go. Stephanie say hi.

Speaker 1 0:50

Hi guys, stephanie here, stephanie Barrett Consulting. Yeah, we're having a great day at Dixell Lots of fun, lots of fun.

Speaker 2 0:56

Our next guest right now is Tom Bessel. Correct, bessel B, bessel, bessel. Yeah, bessel, I had it right the first time. I got all of the Aussie jokes out of the way before you came in. Yeah, we didn't roll on that, thankfully. Shrimp with a barbie Woo-hoo, okay, anyways, but he's from Australia.

Speaker 1 1:11

That's right.

Speaker 2 1:11

So that's what she meant to say. Talk a little bit about yourself. Where are you from?

Speaker 3 1:16

Why are you here? Yeah, so I didn't take a 20-hour flight just to pitch. Unfortunately, I'm currently studying at Wharton Business School at UPenn, which is a two-hour flight down here, all right. So I pitched this morning and, yeah, just here to meet people. Who did you pitch? What did you pitch on? So I pitched Albon. So we're a climate tech startup. We convert agricultural wastewater into fertilizer with microalgae.

Speaker 2 1:40

One more time. That's very cool. One more time here for the English-speaking people here.

Speaker 3 1:43

So we convert agricultural wastewater into fertilizer by growing microalgae.

Speaker 1 1:50

That is cool. How do you do that? Yeah, yeah, so we've Good question.

Speaker 3 1:57

So we've developed these like proprietary photobioreactors is what they're called. So they're essentially at base level, without going into like a of technicals fifth grader over here yeah, it's tubes that grow algae, essentially, and oh, yeah, okay so we pump in, we pump in.

Speaker 3 2:14

We pump in wastewater um. The algae naturally removes phosphorus, nitrogen, grease from that wastewater, yeah, um. And it also removes carbon from the atmosphere, um, and then the algae that we grow. We then convert that into this thing called biochar through this process called pyrolysis. So the algae is basically burnt at a very high temperature, converted to biochar which is a soil amendment that farmers can use to improve crop yields, improve water retention. They sprinkle this on their soil and it's a much more sustainable alternative to chemical fertilizers. Cool.

Speaker 1 2:51

Have you been partnering with Whole Foods or different grocery stores, or what is your angle right now to sell the product?

Speaker 3 2:57

Yeah, great question. So at the moment we're piloting our technology in partnership with the local government in Sydney. Okay, so we're building the system currently. You can follow us on social media to follow like the progress. If you guys want albon underscore au, what is it? Albon underscore au? Okay, au for australia? Um, so yeah, we're building it currently. Um, it's going to be operating with the local government partnership for like the next one year oh, and then off the back of that we hope to um expand into industries such as meat and dairy wastewater processing.

Speaker 3 3:27

Those two in particular, because they have high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus in their wastewater, which the algae is especially good at uptaking those nutrients, and the more the higher. The higher levels of nutrients in the wastewater, the faster the algae grows and the more nutrient-rich our biochar is, so it's like a win-win-win. The worse off the wastewater is.

Speaker 1 3:45

Now did a lot of people have questions for you during your pitch.

Speaker 3 3:48

We didn't actually have.

Speaker 1 3:50

Q&As for the pitch round. So you just had your pitch.

Speaker 3 3:52

It was just the pitch, yeah.

Speaker 1 3:53

Yeah, very neat. So what's your Dick South experience so far? Like networking with other people in similar fields?

Speaker 3 3:58

I mean it's been great, right. Obviously we're not looking to expand to the US just yet. It's on the radar and we're definitely not like we're considering a few international markets down the line. Yeah, india, us, maybe Asia Pacific, south America is also quite feasible. It's been great just chatting with investors, maybe for down the line we're looking to raise in 2028.

Speaker 2 4:25

OK, how did you get invited, or did you have?

Speaker 3 4:28

to um well, how did you get here? You have to submit.

Speaker 2 4:29

Yeah, we submitted a pitch like a pitch deck online uh-huh, um, and then do you know how many people submit and versus how many people make it? Or I don't know I'll stand for that, you know, I only 18 um pitch today though.

Speaker 1 4:41

Yeah, it was 18 pitches today.

Speaker 2 4:43

I think it's pulled out as well actually.

Speaker 1 4:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah, very cool, I think there was 20, and then so there's 18 total. I want to go back to the product real quick.

Speaker 2 4:49

So there's a lot of places that can't grow crops. Dry places Africa or in the desert or anything like that where they need more nutrients in their crops to grow the food are you going to go to these places and this is like yeah this is like down the like futuristic way to grow food right like yeah, sort of.

Speaker 3 5:14

So I mean it's not like a it. We can't magically turn a desert into arable land, right?

Speaker 1 5:19

okay but with yeah damn, I didn't think that, but okay.

Speaker 3 5:25

But I mean the issue with chemical fertilizer at the moment is that farmers are they're over-farming their land and the soils are degrading. So the positive thing about biochar is that it can. It can bring life back into soil where the life was previously lost. Sure, so these soils that have been over-farmed, if farmers spread biochar on their land, that's going to revitalize that soil. Bring it back to life Quicker. Bring back to reactivate that sort of natural like carbon breakdown cycle that was previously in play. That's sort of been like knocked out of the picture.

Speaker 2 5:59

Scale something like that. Yeah, it's got to be pretty interesting how did you just start with this? Concept. Whose idea Is this?

Speaker 1 6:03

your idea.

Speaker 3 6:04

No, it's actually my co-founder's idea. Nice, so he does environmental science, so he looked into he's done a bit of research into microalgae. So we initially we started out back in October sorry, september 2023. Right, and we were initially like purely carbon capture. So we were looking at our magical plan was to go into the middle of Australia and to just put down these algae tubes and to mass farm algae for carbon capture.

Speaker 1 6:33

Right.

Speaker 3 6:34

Which obviously doesn't work.

Speaker 1 6:36

It's more complex than that. It's not that simple.

Speaker 3 6:38

That didn't work. Okay, didn't work. So then we pivoted into wastewater treatment and we won a few like university competitions and then sort of just spiraled out from there into like a startup business. It's been going well so far, very cool.

Speaker 1 6:51

That's amazing. Yeah, it's awesome. Is the goal after you're at Wharton? Is it to go back to Australia and do this, or are you going to stay in the US?

Speaker 3 6:57

yeah, so I've got one more semester of study to go before I've done with the university and then I think we'll stay in Australia for a bit, because that's where we've got all of our connections, our network working with the government. That's neat, exactly yeah we've got government connections, industry connections, we've been chatting with investors and stuff. So the network is definitely stronger in Australia than in the US how do you feel about your pitch today in the?

Speaker 3 7:21

US. How do you feel about your pitch today? Honestly average. I'm sure you did great. You crushed it. I'm sure you crushed it Someone brought you up here.

Speaker 1 7:29

They said enthusiastically you've got to hear this guy's story.

Speaker 2 7:32

That's right, you resonated with somebody.

Speaker 3 7:35

Well, I guess you can always do better. Maybe I'm overly critical. You crushed it.

Speaker 1 7:44

I'm sensing that you crushed it. Yeah, a few too many ums and ahs for me.

Speaker 2 7:46

There you go. I love it well. Thanks for sharing the story. No, thanks for having me, guys, yeah how can people follow you?

Speaker 1 7:51

your story, you said on social media yeah, so we're on Instagram.

Speaker 3 7:54

Sorry on LinkedIn, albon, if you just search us up and then. A-l-b-o-n, a-l-b-o-n and all the interesting stuff happens on our Instagram. Albon underscore AU awesome yeah, so follow the journey. We do some vlogging and stuff, yeah very cool.

Speaker 1 8:08

Well, so nice to meet you. Yeah, nice to meet you both. Are you sticking around for the day?

Speaker 3 8:12

I am, but I'm gonna. I might head back to my comm and then, yeah, freshen up before the did you say you're going back to your common? A comm oh common. Common A cum, oh, common. What is that? Sorry, I asked what someone in the UK would say Like common You're common.

Speaker 1 8:26

I was like okay, take it easy over there, stephanie. All right, guys, thank our sponsors Charleston Media Solutions. Yes.

Speaker 2 8:35

Charleston American Marketing Association. Thank you to Stephanie, thank you to Larry and Jake and Delaney. Yeah, hey, thank you too, new friend.

Speaker 1 8:43

Thank you guys, New friend Tom. Thank you, Tom, for being here.