Algae-Biodiesel Maker Looking at Food Biz
The food-versus-fuel debate gets a bit of a twist as an algae-biodiesel maker decides it will make fuel AND food.
This story in the San Francisco Business Times says the Bay area’s Solazyme, which has been working on turning algae into biodiesel for the past seven years, recently has been developing the nutritionals side of its business and could have products out in 2010:
The decision to diversify into foods came almost by accident as the company successfully got algae to excrete oils, said chief technology officer and co-founder Harrison Dillon.
“We were running lipid profiles (on the algae) and observing that, ‘Wow this looks like olive oil,’” Dillon said. “Epiphany No. 2 was, ‘let’s stop thinking about ourselves as a diesel fuel company and starting thinking of ourselves as a renewable oil company.’”
Once Solazyme discovered the range of uses for algae oil, it structured its business in three units: fuels and chemicals; food products; and health sciences which includes cosmetics. Foods will likely be among the first products to market for the company, giving it some leeway — and revenue — before it can commercialize its fuels.
Some of the first food products being developed by Solazyme include mustard, a milk substitute and flour.
The diversity of their products should help Solazyme weather the current tough times the biodiesel industry is going through.
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Algae-Biodiesel Maker Looking at Food Biz – Domestic Fuel | ALL DIESEL TECH
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Daily News—12/29/09 - Blog - Site Root - BioDieselNow - Renewable biodiesel fuel
[...] Algae-based biodiesel producer expands the business to include food [...]
Daily News—12/29/09
[...] Algae-based biodiesel producer expands the business to include food [...]
Clinton
Univenture and AlgaeVenture Systems philosophy utilizes waste energies from collocated facilities including heat, with an additional requirement for suitable water-cooling resources (geothermal, river, or body of water), CO2 waste gas, and nutrient/organic wastes. The targeted industries are power generation, wastewater, livestock, food waste, biomass waste, landfill, and various industrial concerns. The resulting systems will provide resource conservation, improved water and air quality while producing large quantities of biomass for utilization for fuel, feed, food, fertilizer, and other advanced materials or products. This integrated strategy will result in a leap forward for sustainability strategies, which can be implemented by a variety of concerns while lowering the floor to capital & expense viability. Univenture firmly believes the primary path forward for fuels from algae will require capital cost sharing with collocated facilities along with an evolutionary path to the profit floor of fuel. Justification of capital cost share comes from cleaner water and air through a variety of considerations, including: ecological, social, energy policies, and national security justifications. Solar energy is one contributing direct energy source, not the sole source other organic carbon sources can provide massive additional energy to obtain lipids. Enclosed systems offer tremendous advantages for control, optimization, continual processing, and resource (water) conservation. These philosophies allow for algae to be grown for fuel and other products economically and virtually anywhere the natural and industrial resources can be utilized in an economically balanced combination.
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