Biocatalysis

Algae has garnered a lot of attention as a biofuels source, but a big economic hurdle is collecting the oil-rich algae from ponds in which they are grown so that they can be processed to extract the fuel. LiveFuels has a novel approach to that problem: have fish eat the algae and recover and process the fish. The tag-line: biomass concentration as nature intended it. One algae expert called this approach “not impossible.” I also find it not unlikely that no funding will not be found from investors who are not unbelieving this not impossible approach.

I love some of the promotional tag lines in the biofuels arena, and the newest one, courtesy of Joule Biotechnologies, is “fuel from thin air.” The Massachusetts-based firm has developed a genetically-engineered microbe that, according to the company, converts carbon dioxide, sunlight, and standard nutrients into ethanol. Joule estimates based on its lab data that the process can produce 25,000 gallons of ethanol for $50 per barrel. A pilot plant to prove this is planned for a yet-to-be-disclosed location in the American Southwest. Hold on to your horses!

Solazyme, which until now has positioned itself as a producer of biofuels from algae, has just announced a shift in focus to produce food oils. The company believes it can have products on the market in 2010.  According to chief technology officer Harrison Dillon, the decision to diversify into food products came about by almost by accident when scientists at the company discovered their algae could excrete oils that were similar to olive oil. Olive oil has a market price about 25 times higher than fuel; I’ll bet that also played a role in the decision.

Biofuels Digest has released its new rankings of biofuels companies. Here are the top 10, many of which have been profiled here in the past:

1 Solazyme,2 Poet, 3 Amyris, 4 BP Biofuels, 5 Sapphire Energy, 6 Coskata, 7 DuPont Danisco, 8 LS9, 9 Verenium, 10 Mascoma.

There were a few new names on the list: BP Biofuels was unranked last year and showed up at number 4 this year. Other newbies were further down the list.  Algae companies were strong this year, along with companies showing ability to scale up production for ethanol. We will take a closer look at some of these players in upcoming posts.

In a press release yesterday Massachusetts-based Qteros, developer of the Q-microbe “”superbug” (actually Clostridium phytoferrans, but “Q” is much easier to pronounce and type).

The processes uses a material the company calls Recyllose-sewage sludge solids that are high is cellulose. Turning sewage sludge into ethanol offers a big opportunity for Qteros, which is partnering with Israel-based Applied CleanTech to develop the technology. Recyllose is a particularly good type of cellulosic feedstock as it contains very low amounts of lignin, the plant cell wall component that is difficult to degrade. Qteros-ACT scientists claim 120-135 gallons of ethanol per ton of Recyllose, and titers of 9% ethanol currently.

Quoting from the press release: “Our customer is every municipality that has a wastewater treatment plant,” said Jeff Hausthor, Qteros co-founder and senior project manager. “It will provide a value-added product for municipal wastewater plants, thereby making treatment plants much less expensive to run and helping local governments throughout the world with their constrained budgets.”

Israel Biran, ACT’s CEO, added, “It also helps answer the question of what municipalities can do with their sewage sludge, a major challenge now facing every wastewater treatment plant operator.”

There has been a PR blitz over the past 24 hours, and it appears to be well-merited.

Any time an industry gets “hot” as has been the case for biofuels, spokespersons at the companies inevitably search for ways to differentiate their companies, products, and technologies. I’m not talking about hype or distortions, but rather the creative spin—names, words, and phrases—that are coined in an effort to make a company’s offerings stand out and be memorable.

I started thinking about this recently when I ran across a phrase on the web site of Joule Biotechnologies. According to the company’s web site, Joule is developing “SolarFuel^TM liquid energy.” I guess it just wouldn’t sound as impressive if they called it a fuel (and the company is assiduously eschewing the term biofuel). But if the so-called “ liquid energy” is not a fuel, what is it? And, just to be clear, the first “liquid energy” product Joule is aiming for is ethanol. This got me thinking that there must be other examples, and some I found are quite creative.

Below is a listing of some phrases from various biofuels companies, followed by my translation of what the phrase really means.

“Liquid Energy” (Joule Biotechnologies): biofuel such as ethanol

“99.7% pure ethanol” (Coskata): ethanol of similar purity to that made by every other bio-ethanol company, after refining

“Tightly protected Intellectual Property” (various): patents are pending

“Consolidated Bioprocessing Method” (Qteros): Their own particular sequence of bioprocessing steps to produce a biofuel

“The New Oil” (Range Fuels): biofuel (but really ethanol in this case)

“Green Crude” (Sapphire Energy): biofuel

“Pond to Pump” (Live Fuels): making biofuel from algae (I kind of like this one)

No Compromise^TM (Amyris): The trademarked name of Amyris’ new biodiesel product that is more like petroleum-based diesel (I like this one, too!)

If you have some other examples, please post in comments.

What would you call a company that uses a microorganism to produce fuel? Well, according to Bill Sims, CEO of Joule Biotechnologies, not a biofuels company.

Sims was only announced as CEO of Joule yesterday, but he is wasting no time in trying to shine a public light on the company, although his comments are not always very illuminating. Joule has developed what it calls a HelioCulture system that concentrates sunlight and relies on a “highly engineered synthetic organism” that is unidentified but is “not algae” to convert CO₂ and nutrients to produce fuels and chemicals. But since no biomass is used, Sims is trying to avoid the “biofuels” moniker and what he considers to be the negative PR that comes with it.

The basic concept is termed “revolutionary” by Sims, and appears to be similar to that of Craig Venter’s company Synthetic Genomics, which recently announced a large commercialization agreement with Exxon Mobil.

According to Sims, Joule hasn’t worked out its business model yet, preferring to wait for the market to determine whether it is better to produce and sell fuels or license the technology to fuels producers, but that didn’t stop Flagship Ventures from making an initial investment that is termed “substantially less than $50 million.”

It all sounds great, but I see one drawback right away. Ethanol is planned to be the first product, and ethanol is a lousy fuel. And, I am sorry about this Bill, but I am tagging this post under biofuels and biofuels companies. I really wouldn’t know how else to categorize it.

Exxon Mobil, which has avoided the biofuels frenzy so far, has finally made its entrance, and it is a grand one.  The oil giant has announced a $300 million investment to develop algae as a producer of hydrocarbons, which could then be processed in existing refineries. Exxon Mobil’s partner is notable as well–Craig Venter’s Synthetic Genomics. If all goes well, Venter’s company will engineer carbon dioxide-utilizing algae to produce and–the key step–then secrete the hydrocarbons to eliminate the need for isolating and breaking the cells. It is an ambitious goal, and if successful, a commercial home run.

GreenFuel Technologies Corporation, which planned to convert CO2 from smokestacks into fuel using algae, announced it is closing and put its assets up for sale. This is after spending more than $70 million in venture funding. I like this lead sentence from its web site announcing the offering of assets: “After leading the algae clean tech industry for the past 8 years …“. Leading the industry where?

South Dakota-based POET Bioenergy is scouting for acquisition among distressed assets. CEO JEff Broin believes that his company’s superior technology allows certain unprofitable ethanol producers to become profitable if only they could adopt POET’s BPX process, producing up to 3 gallons of ethanol per bushel of corn.