On June 2, 2026, the Ontario Water Consortium hosted an Innovation Showcase webinar highlighting continued progress from the Waste to Chemicals (W2C) Alliance, building on earlier work introduced in 2024 through “Going Beyond Biogas” and a 2025 progress webinar that first shared results from the initiative’s long-term demonstration phase.
The latest session focused on how the Alliance is now moving from demonstration toward deployment, as anaerobic digestion is increasingly repositioned from a conventional energy recovery process to a platform for producing high-value chemicals from organic waste streams.
What began as a research effort to demonstrate the feasibility of producing medium-chain fatty acids (MCFAs) from municipal organics has now moved into a more advanced stage. After more than three years of integrated biological, engineering, and commercial development, the Alliance is increasingly focused on translating lab and pilot-scale results into deployable systems that can be integrated within existing organics processing infrastructure.
Supported by an NSERC Alliance–Mitacs Accelerate grant, the project is led by University of Toronto Professors Christopher Lawson and Jay Werber in collaboration with Veolia Water Technologies, the Ontario Clean Water Agency, CBS Bio Platforms, Envera, the Ontario Water Consortium, and the City of Toronto. Toronto’s Dufferin and Disco Road facilities have provided source-separated organics (SSO), enabling long-term testing under real operating conditions.
Turning municipal organics into chemical feedstocks
Anaerobic digestion has traditionally been used to stabilize organics and produce biogas. The W2C Alliance is expanding this model by positioning AD as a platform for chemical production. The primary target is medium-chain fatty acids, used in animal feed, fuels, lubricants, and specialty chemicals. Today, these are largely produced from palm kernel and coconut oil systems associated with environmental and price volatility concerns. Producing MCFAs from municipal waste offers a lower-carbon, locally sourced alternative with potential economic value for municipalities and industry. Across multiple years of continuous operation using Toronto’s organics streams, the Alliance has shown that MCFA production can be sustained under real-world variability. Rather than relying on idealized feedstocks, the system has been tested against seasonal and compositional fluctuations typical of municipal waste systems.
Key outcomes include:
- Stable MCFA production can be maintained using real source-separated organics
- Feedstock variability affects yield and product distribution
- Long-term operation is possible despite seasonal fluctuations
These results confirm that performance is not limited to controlled laboratory conditions and can extend into municipal operating environments.
A key focus of the Alliance has been improving control over microbial communities responsible for converting organic substrates into MCFAs. Rather than relying solely on naturally evolving consortia, researchers have identified key organisms involved in chain elongation pathways and examined how they respond to changing operating conditions. This has enabled more intentional steering of microbial activity toward desired outputs. Building on this, the project is advancing toward engineered microbial systems using synthetic biology and Design–Build–Test–Learn approaches. These allow researchers to assemble microbial communities with complementary metabolic functions and refine them iteratively.
This work is enabling:
- Improved process stability under variable feedstock conditions
- Higher MCFA production rates and yields
- Greater control over product chain length and distribution
- Expansion toward additional value-added chemical products
Rather than treating microbial communities as passive systems, the Alliance is moving toward deliberate microbiome engineering as a core design tool.
Membrane technology enabling continuous recovery
Product recovery remains a key technical challenge, as MCFAs can inhibit microbial activity at higher concentrations. To address this, the Alliance developed a solvent-free extraction system using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) membranes. These selectively remove MCFAs directly from the fermentation broth without organic solvents. The membrane system is integrated with the biological process, enabling continuous extraction and downstream recovery of MCFA-rich oil. This reduces inhibition while improving overall process efficiency.
Key advantages include:
- Continuous removal of inhibitory products
- Elimination of solvent-based extraction
- Improved microbial stability and productivity
- Modular design suitable for scale-up and retrofit
In-line extraction has proven critical to maintaining stable long-term performance while increasing overall yields.
A major milestone highlighted during the webinar was the recovery of MCFA oil now being evaluated by CBS Bio Platforms for use in animal feed applications. This represents an important step toward validating commercial relevance. CBS is assessing suitability for livestock feed markets, helping bridge technical development and real-world application. The Alliance also demonstrated that recovered MCFAs can be processed using either membrane-based purification or conventional acidification, depending on downstream needs. This flexibility supports multiple potential end-use pathways.
Key deployment considerations discussed include:
- Economic viability without long-term subsidies
- Growing demand for sustainable MCFAs in agriculture and chemicals
- Modular design enabling retrofit into existing facilities
- Ongoing regulatory engagement for pilot deployment
These factors reflect a shift from technical validation toward implementation planning.
Moving toward deployment and system integration
Beyond technical performance, the Alliance is focused on how waste-to-chemicals systems can integrate into existing municipal infrastructure. This includes retrofit opportunities at organics processing facilities and integration with existing anaerobic digestion systems.
A central theme is the development of a broader value chain connecting waste generators, technology developers, and end users. In this model, municipal organics become a distributed feedstock for chemical production rather than a disposal challenge.
With multi-year performance now demonstrated, the Alliance is preparing for pilot-scale deployment to validate system performance under scaled conditions and advance toward commercialization.
The Waste to Chemicals Alliance continues to show how advances in microbiology, synthetic biology, and membrane engineering can redefine anaerobic digestion. As it moves from demonstration to deployment, it provides a practical blueprint for transforming organic waste into a platform for sustainable chemical production and advancing Canada’s circular bioeconomy.