algae

Algae biofuel producer Solazyme announced Wednesday it's delivered 20,000 gallons of algae-based shipboard fuel to the U.S. Navy.

Solazyme's Soladiesel Renewable Naval Distillate fuel will go toward the Navy's ambitious goal of getting 50 percent of its energy from renewable resources by 2020.

But algae fuel is not just useful for the Navy's ships.

This past summer Solazyme also delivered 1,500 gallons of algae-based jet fuel to the U.S. Navy for testing. If testing goes well, Solazyme's algae-based advance biofuel could be powering some of our nation's military aircraft.

The … Read more

Liquid fuels is one of the biggest markets in energy, but a quicker path to profitability for algae companies may well pass through the supermarket.

Aurora Algae on Monday announced it has changed its name from Aurora Biofuels and is now targeting a broader set of products than biodiesel.

The Alameda, Calif.-based company has worked for four years isolating and enhancing strains of algae it plans to grow in open ponds. A year ago, Aurora's focus was biofuels, but now it intends to farm algae for pharmaceuticals, food, and animal feed.

Among the planned products are Omega-3 fatty … Read more

PetroAlgae, which makes systems for growing and harvesting algae for food and fuel, on Wednesday filed documents to raise $200 million through an initial public offering.

The Melbourne, Fla.-based company is already listed on the OTC Bulletin Board and lists no revenue in its S-1 prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Using algae as a feedstock for fuel holds great promise because it can be grown in many different climates and can be used for animal feed as well as fuel. But so far no company has been able to produce it at large scale or cost-effectively. … Read more

Even as investor interest in biofuels has cooled substantially from a few years ago, Solazyme has emerged as one of the few contenders for bringing algae-based fuel to market.

The company on Monday announced that it has raised $52 million in a series D round, which brings investment bank Morgan Stanley into its list of investors. In addition to venture-capital companies, the venture arms of Chevron and Japanese food ingredient manufacturer San-Ei Gen also participated.

Solazyme stands out from the dozens of companies seeking to make fuels and food products from algae in its technical approach and, to some degree, … Read more

Exxon Mobil said Wednesday it opened a greenhouse facility to grow and test algae, the next step for its nascent biofuels program.

Researchers from Exxon and its partner Synthetic Genomics, will use the facility to test whether large-scale quantities of affordable fuel can be produced from algae.

Exxon said last year it will invest $600 million over the next five to six years attempting to develop biofuel from algae.

If research milestones are successfully met, Exxon said it will spend more than the $600 million over the next decade, $300 million of which will be allocated to SGI.

Exxon's … Read more

Valero Services, a subsidiary of the oil refiner Valero Energy, has signed a joint development agreement with Algenol Biofuels to share technology regarding "production and distribution of transportation fuels and chemicals," the company announced Thursday.

Algenol Biofuels, which was founded in 2006, has developed technology that capitalizes on certain types of algae with natural sugar-making abilities, harnessing their enzymes to ferment sugar into ethanol. The metabolically enhanced algae are grown in bioreactors. They're then manipulated with a combination of things like nutrients, water, pH levels, temperature, and salinity to produce ethanol, according to Algenol.

The amount and … Read more

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Wednesday announced the recipients of more than $80 million in government funding for biofuels research and development.

The bulk of the funding, coming from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, went to algae research and development, while the rest went toward improving the country's ethanol infrastructure.

About $44 million went to the National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts (NAABB), an organization led by the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. The research institute, which hosts the plant science labs of several universities, is coordinating the efforts of private, academic, and public organizations … Read more

PetroAlgae has signed a memorandum of understanding to license its proprietary technology for producing and harvesting algae for fuel to Indian Oil, the company announced this week.

The Melbourne, Fla.-based company has developed bioreactors and harvesting methods for converting algae grown in open-pond freshwater farms into biodiesel.

The first phase of its partnership with Indian Oil will involve building a test facility to see whether PetroAlgae's production method is scalable. Once that has proven to be successful, Indian Oil plans to build a commercial production facility that could produce 200,000 tpa (tonnes per annum) of biodiesel. That … Read more

Howeler Yoon Architecture has proposed that an algae farm and vertical garden be erected at the old Filene's Basement site in Boston's Downtown Crossing.

The prefabricated design of interlocking pods containing algae-incubators on the inside and plants on the outside would be a temporary structure until the city of Boston, the site's owners, and the new owner of the bankrupt Filene's Basement chain agree on what to ultimately do with the historic Washington Street real estate.

But it's not just a one-off idea for the Filene's Basement spot.

Howeler Yoon, which is collaborating with … Read more