Energy as a Service
Core revenue
Symbiocle installs and runs the digester with no upfront capital cost to the tannery, and sells BioCNG at a discount to diesel.
Symbiocle
Waste loves waste. Symbiocle pairs toxic tannery wastewater with crop straw that would otherwise be burnt, and turns both into clean bioenergy and fertilizer.
Two liabilities, one solution
Tanneries discharge alkaline, sulfide-rich beamhouse wastewater. Farms burn the straw left after harvest. Both are costly problems.
Symbiocle treats them as ingredients. The wastewater becomes a pretreatment reagent for the straw, and the mix becomes feedstock for anaerobic digestion. Nothing is dumped, and nothing is burnt.
250 billion litres
of toxic tannery beamhouse wastewater
180 million tonnes
of agricultural straw that is burnt
Global volumes from Symbiocle’s market analysis.
How it works
Modular dry digesters sit close to the tannery, so the waste never has to travel far.
Collect
Beamhouse wastewater from the tannery and straw from surrounding farms arrive at the unit.
Pretreat
The alkaline wastewater breaks down the tough lignocellulose in the straw. A proprietary formulation controls sulfides so digestion stays stable.
Digest
Solid-state anaerobic digestion in a low-cost, garage-type dry digester turns the mix into biogas.
Recover
The tannery receives BioCNG, and the digestate becomes an organic biofertilizer.
Pretreating the straw with tannery wastewater drives a two to threefold increase in methane yield.
How Symbiocle earns
Three revenue streams, designed so tanneries pay nothing up front.
SymbiCarbon
In development
Methane avoidance credits verified by sensors on each unit, earning revenue in US dollars that cushions currency swings.
SymbiPay and SymbiCredit
In development
Payment tools for service fees, and asset loans that widen financial access for farmers.
Where it stands
From prototype to a pilot in an operational setting, starting with Kano’s industrial clusters.
Symbiocle estimates a global market of 1.6 billion US dollars across the world’s leather belt.
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Now
Prototype
Technology readiness level 4: the process is validated at prototype scale.
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Next
Campus pilot
A fence-line pilot at the Zero Bola campus, with agronomy trials to validate the biofertilizer.
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Target
Operational
Technology readiness level 7: proven in an operational environment.
Rooted in research
Symbiocle was founded by Dr. Anas Balarabe Yazid to commercialize his Imperial College London doctoral research on solid-state anaerobic digestion of agricultural waste pretreated with tannery wastewater.
It is the first venture built through the Catalyst, Zero Bola’s venture studio.
Like to work with us?
Founders, researchers, and operators: tell us what you are building.
Interested in a potential partnership?
Corporates, funders, and institutions: let’s scope it together.