Canadian grower SunSelect Produce is converting carbon dioxide gases from greenhouse heating into fertilizer for its sweet bell peppers, the producer's marketer The Oppenheimer Group has revealed.

The system burns wood-waste in a boiler to heat a 40-acre greenhouse, the remaining flue gas is cooled, stripped of its carbon dioxide using a water-based organic solvent and stored in a buffer tank.

SunSelect's sister company ProSelect Gas Treating Inc teamed up with a Dutch green technology firm Procede BV to pilot the scheme in greenhouses.

ProSelect co-founder and director Victor Krahn, said the system only emits carbon-free excess vapor into the atmosphere.

"The resulting pure carbon dioxide-laden solvent is boiled off to release food grade CO2 gas at the demand of the greenhouse, cooled and administered directly to the plants, in a seamless, computer-controlled and monitored process."

SunSelect is one of 12 greenhouses in British Columbia using non-marketable waste products, also known as biomass, from the timber industry as heat, but the only one to use the CO2 from the trees as plant nutrients.

"We converted from natural gas heat to biomass several years ago, and pioneered a carbon neutral pepper program in 2007. We believed it was possible to capture carbon dioxide from wood waste and use it to grow food, so we kept an eye out for a way to do it."

Sustainable Development Technology Canada, the Innovative Clean Energy Fund and a British Columbian government entity for green power, partially funded research and development of the system called GC6 Green Carbon Capture.

Oppenheimer greenhouse category director Aaron Quon, said his company was promoting the new system through a range of different media.

"We now have an even stronger  sustainability message standing behind our SunSelect pepper program. We are introducing the program through social media and point-of-sale material that directs consumers to SunSelect’s recently refreshed website."

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