Simple Planet saves environment with technology, wins Clean Tech D.Day

Simple Planet Chief Executive Officer Jeong Il-doo, right [Photo by Cho Kwang-hyun]

D.Camp, which is operated by the Banks Foundation for Young Entrepreneurs, named Simple Planet as the winner of D.Day, South Korea’s oldest startup competition, which was held at start-up hub FRONT1 in Mapo, Seoul on September 21.

Simple Planet develops a platform for mass-producing cultured meat and serum-free culture media based on cellular agriculture technology. The company produces 2 to 5 kilograms of food raw materials per month with 13 types of cultured cells extracted from cows, pigs, and chickens, but produces cell culture raw materials in the form of powder rather than cultured meat in the form of meat chunks. Creating the necessary cell culture medium for cell growth requires serum, and extracting serum in turn requires raising cows separately, which drives up costs. But Simple Planet Chief Executive Officer Jeong Il-doo has developed a serum-free culture media that reduces production costs to about 1,200 won ($0.90) per liter, significantly lower than the previous cost of 620,000 won per liter and showcasing the company’s technological competitiveness.

Greenerds, the runner-up in September’s D.Day competition, is developing the first electrochemical carbon capture technology in Korea. Conventional carbon capture technologies require heating processes of over 900 degrees Celsius, resulting in high energy consumption and low economic feasibility. However, Greenerds uses an electrochemical carbon capture technology that eliminates the heating and pressurization processes, allowing it to capture more than three times the amount of carbon with the same energy consumption. This technology can be easily installed regardless of the distance between carbon emission sources and is suitable for mass production. The company plans to release a prototype by 2024.

The other four finalists of D.Day for September are as follows:

VGen provides Virtual Power Plant (VPP) solutions for the bidding market in line with the renewable energy bidding system scheduled to be fully implemented in 2025. Currently, power generation companies can sell all the electricity they produce without going through a bidding process. However, when the renewable energy bidding system is implemented, power producers will have to bid for their output in the wholesale electricity market the day before to produce and sell as much electricity as they bid for the next day. VPP is a system that integrates and manages multiple power plants as a single power plant using cloud-based artificial intelligence software, allowing effective management of renewable energy, which has significant variations in generation depending on the weather. VGen has been using VPP to predict renewable energy generation levels with the highest accuracy in the industry.

Conalog provides a solution called “Conalog Patch” that uses information and communications technology to smartly manage solar power plants. Conalog Patch collects power generation data more than once every 10 seconds through hardware attached to each solar panel. It analyzes the collected data to diagnose the cause of low power generation and suggests low-cost customized maintenance solutions. Unlike existing monitoring systems that cannot detect minor faults due to low data resolution, Conalog Patch can quickly diagnose issues such as shadowing, panel contamination, and hotspots, for a rapid response. The company introduced Conalog Patch to more than ten private and public power plants within the first year of its launch and secured a cumulative investment of 700 million won.

CBBS is developing technology for the next-generation silicon anode material for secondary batteries using graphene material. Silicon anode materials have recently gained attention as materials for next-generation high-capacity, high-output electric vehicle batteries as they can reduce electric vehicle charging time to 5 minutes but are yet to be commercially viable due to stability issues. To address this issue, the company’s Chief Executive Officer Byun Chan used graphene, which is a two-dimensional carbon nanomaterial that offers excellent electrical conductivity and chemical stability. By coating the silicon surface with graphene, the company improved the capacity, lifespan, and charging speed of silicon anodes.

Unda Engineering is a Turkish startup that has developed Calor-e, an energy storage solution for renewable energy. Calor-e stores energy produced during times of low power demand or high renewable energy production and releases the stored thermal energy during times of high demand. It can store up to 1 MWe, which is enough to power more than 460 households based on the average electricity usage in Korea.

The latest D.Day event was jointly organized with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), with judges including Choi Kyung-hee, partner at Sopoong Ventures, Lim Sung-hoon, general partner at D3Jubilee Partners, Nam Bo-hyun, CEO at HG Initiative, and Cha Hyuk-jin , team leader at LG Electronics Inc.