Montreal-based 5N Plus, meanwhile, is diversifying its business through acquisition. The company is the main supplier of cadmium telluride to First Solar and others, such as Abound Solar. But analysts were concerned 5N wasn’t diversified enough and was too dependent on its business with First Solar. So 5N decided this week to acquire Belgian-based MCP Group, which is a producer of specialty metals such as bismuth, gallium, indium and selenium. This allows 5N to tap into the market for CIGS solar cells (that is, copper indium gallium selenide cells), but also a whole range of other products: LEDs, flat-panel displays, fuel cells and other forms of energy storage.

Heading to the West Coast, biomass gasification expert Nexterra has raised $15 million in equity financing from Tandem Expansion Funds and ARC Financial. Nexterra makes small-scale biomass CHP systems based on the gasification of biomass. The systems are ideal for distributed generation in a hospital, university, industrial or municipal setting, and because it is ultra low emission it is a good fit for urban environments. The company has a solid partnership with General Electric and just snagged some government funding for a large biomass-based CHP system at the University of British Columbia, which says the 2-megawatt system when it’s up and running in 2012 will reduce its demand for natural gas by 12 per cent.

In Florida, algae-to-ethanol startup Algenol has acquired its German partner Cyano Biofuels GmbH. Okay, the company isn’t based in Canada, but Algenol’s founder Paul Woods is a Canadian who grew up in the Toronto area and kickstarted the natural gas retail market in Ontario before moving south. And some of Algenol’s core innovation comes out of the University of Toronto, so I consider the company an honourary Canadian corporate citizen. Cyano Biofuels is an expert in producing hybrid algae that can produce ethanol, and Algenol was already a minority shareholder in the company. Algenol saw the all-out acquisition as a way to accelerate the commercialization of its Direct-to-Ethanol process using genetically enhanced cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. I’m a fan of Algenol, which is the focus of a chapter in my upcoming book Mad Like Tesla.

Finally, Sustainable Development Technology Canada issued another round of grants to 17 companies doing cleantechie stuff. I’ll go through some of these in more detail later, either as part of a Clean Break column or a quick post. But check out the list — there are some interesting projects there. As I’ve always said, SDTC funding rounds are like Christmas time for cleantech news junkies like myself.

Sustainable Development Technlogy Canada just completed its 13th funding round, this time putting $53 million into 16 cleantech projects and bringing its total funding to $376 million. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, SDTC only invests if private consortia come to the table with two-thirds of project funding. In total, 154 project have been funded with $1.3 billion in public-private funds.

Here are, in my opinion, some of the more interesting projects that got funded in this round:

Alterna Energy Inc. — This B.C.-based company is going to build and demonstrate a “biocarbon” production facility designed to process wood residues, such as bark, sawmill waste, forest slash and trees killed by pine beetle infestation. The facility will be able to turn 110,000 tonnes of wood residue into 25,000 tonnes of biocarbon annually. So what is biocarbon? Its physical and chemical properties are very similar to coal. Alterna’s process carbonizes the wood — or any other form of biomass – in about 1.5 hours and pelletizes it with virtually no external  energy inputs. The resulting pellets, because they closely resemble coal, can be used at existing coal-fired generating stations with limited modifications. Such a process could bode well for Ontario Power Generation, which wants to convert some coal-fired units to 100 per cent biomass. Perhaps biocarbon is the way to go. (I should point out that biocarbon is essentially biochar, which offers a great way to sequester carbon while reviving depleted soils and enhancing plant growth. Read previous post on biochar here).

General Fusion Inc. – Another B.C.-based company, General Fusion, has developed a technology that uses acoustic waves to create fusion reactors. The end goal is to produce inexpensive and plentiful electricity without greenhouse gas emissions, or long-lived radioactive waste. Under this project, the company will construct a full-scale engine that will demonstrate improved energy conversion efficiencies. The demonstration project will produce 600 megajoules of thermal energy per cycle.

Greenfield Ethanol Inc. — This Toronto-based ethanol producer will integrate a lignocellulosic process into an existing facility as part of a pre-commercial pilot. It will produce ethanol using corn cobs using a special pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis process that, if it works as planned, could be applied to first-generation ethanol facilities that, in turn, could be retrofitted to second generation facilities. The company believes it could produce 70 million litres per year of ethanol just on corn cobs by 2015.

Performance Plants Inc. — This company is based in Kingston, Ontario, and has developed a more efficient way to convert cellulosic feedstocks into ethanol by modifying the cell wall structure of cellulose fibres. In essence, the company’s process makes it easier for the cell walls to release useable sugars that are eventually converted into alcohols. This innovation will lead to lower energy consumption during ethanol production, a lower requirement for enzymes, and faster processing times. SDTC is providing $5.6 million in funding for this project.

SunCentral Inc. – Another B.C.-based company, SunCentral has developed a solar canopy illumination system that brings daylight inside multistory buildings to cut down on daytime lighting costs. It uses low cost tracking mirrors and simple light guides in a modular design. First it collects sunlight on the exterior façade of a building and then distributes it up to 20 metres into the building core. This technology is easy to retrofit to existing buildings undergoing renovations or, alternatively, it can be included in the design of new buildings. The company claims that energy savings on commercial building lighting will be at least 25 per cent.

It’s a match made in renewable heaven. After two years of collaboration Vancouver-based Nexterra Energy, developer of biomass gasification systems, has partnered with GE Energy to create modular biomass combined heat and power (CHP) plants of between 2 and 10 megawatts in size. Nexterra has optimized its system to work with GE’s Jenbacher high-efficiency gas engines. Specifically, it has upgraded the syngas that comes out of its system so that it meets the fuel specifications of the Jenbacher engine.

“We believe the combination of biomass gasification and internal combustion engines is a breakthrough for biomass power generation,” said Prady Iyyanki, CEO of GE’s Jenbacher division.

The biomass CHP system is ideal for on-site heat and power applications at universities, hospitals, and other government facilities, as well as food and beverage plants, waste management facilities and forest product mills. Independent power producers — perhaps part of community co-ops — could also use the systems as standalone power generators for their communities.

The companies said they will take the next 24 months to test and demonstrate the modular system, at a cost of about $30 million. It will start this year as a 250-kilowatt test system at Nexterra’s development centre, followed by a 2-megawatt commercial-scale system demonstrated at a customer site. “Our objective is to exploit this opportunity by creating a new standard of small-scale biomass power solution that has widespread application as a distributed generation solution,” said Nexterra president Jonathan Rhone. “We believe this approach has significant advantages over large-scale, centralized combustion-based biomass power plants in terms of higher efficiency, lower fuel risk and reduced emissions.”

This is an excellent product offering, particularly in places — such as B.C. (read: pine beetle waste) and Northern Ontario — where woody biomass is plentiful. In Ontario, where Ontario Power Generation is exploring setting up a massive biomass supply chain to support a coal-to-biomass plant conversion, it would make sense to plug these biomass systems into the supply network that develops.