BiofuelAi – a University of Surrey spinout that uses artificial intelligence to help biogas plants produce more renewable energy at lower cost with reduced emissions – has won the Manchester Prize. The UK government’s flagship AI innovation challenge comes with a £1 million government award.
BiofuelAi, co-founded by Professor Michael Short from the University of Surrey, has developed an AI-powered decision support platform. This transforms how biogas plant operators manage production.
Where plants have historically relied on experience, know-how and intuitions, the new platform gives operators a real-time picture of what is happening inside their digesters and what action will produce the best outcome.
Pilot trials have demonstrated revenue increases of between 6 and 10 per cent. Profit is up between 7 and 13 per cent while there is a 28 per cent reduction in carbon emissions.
BiofuelAi’s Manchester Prize win is a real boon for the company, which is based at the Surrey Technology Centre in Guildford.
Expansion plans are underway. BiofuelAi is currently onboarding three new sites with its solution and has signed a UK reseller agreement. In time this could create new roles for the local economy and support regional growth.
BiofuelAi – roots in Surrey
BiofuelAi is a spinout from the University of Surrey’s AI4AD research project. It has attracted more than £1.5m in research funding.
The focus is on biogas. This is produced through anaerobic digestion, the breakdown of organic material such as agricultural waste, food waste and wastewater. It is a significant and growing component of the UK’s renewable energy mix.
The founding team includes Dr Benaissa Dekhici, Dr Rohit Murali and Dr Ruosi Zhang alongside Professor Short and Alan Beesley. Together they combine over 40 years of modelling expertise with experience of the biogas industry.
BiofuelAi’s platform works by combining mechanistic models, machine learning and hybrid approaches to create a digital twin of a biogas plant.
This allows for simultaneous optimisation of short-term decisions – such as feeding recipes and storage management – and longer-term ones, including feedstock acquisition and digester health. It also accounts for uncertainty in the biological process.
Over five years, BiofuelAi projects its platform could deliver more than £500m in client value. By 2030, the company estimates its platform could mitigate 293,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year across the UK – the equivalent of heating 133,000 homes.Â
BiofuelAi and the Manchester Prize – reaction
Alan Beesley, CEO and co-founder of BiofuelAi, said: “The biogas industry is one of the least data-driven sectors in energy. Plants that generate the heat and power for thousands of homes are still largely managed through spreadsheets and operator experience.
“BiofuelAi changes that. Winning the Manchester Prize validates the work of an exceptional team and accelerates our mission to make green energy more affordable, more consistent and more accessible.”
Science Minister Lord Vallance said: “The technology BiofuelAi has built could supercharge our mission to power Britain with clean, affordable energy, helping green energy plants produce even more power and cut carbon emissions. And they are just getting started.
“The Manchester Prize was created to find exactly this kind of innovation. Not AI as an abstract idea, but something that delivers results. This is British AI leadership in practice: world-class researchers tackling hard challenges and helping to build the industries of the future.”
Professor Stephen Jarvis, President and Vice-Chancellor at the University of Surrey, said: “BiofuelAi follows a long tradition of spinouts from our University – grounded in research with a clear purpose, by people determined to see it make a difference beyond the campus.
“The work started here in Guildford and has now won national recognition for what it could mean for the UK’s clean energy supply. That matters because energy security is not an abstract policy question right now. It depends on producing more of what we need at home, and the less efficiently we use domestic resources like biogas, the more dependent we remain on supplies we cannot control.”
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