Tuesday, October 21, 2008

GreenFuel ramps up Spanish algae operation

By Mass High Tech Staff

GreenFuel Technologies Corp., a maker of algae-based bioreactors, has reached the second phase of its $92 million Europe-based algae farm project. The facility, which is being built at the Holcim cement plant near Jerez, Spain, and in conjunction with Spanish renewable energy firm Aurantia SA, could eventually scale to 100 hectares and produce 25,000 tons of algae biomass per year, according to company executives.

The project began in 2007 with a field assessment unit from GreenFuel for the construction, delivery and initial operation, which has successfully grown a variety of naturally occurring algae strains using flue gases from the Holcim plant. The second phase of the project began recently with the successful inoculation and subsequent harvests of a 100-square-meter prototype vertical thin-film algae-solar bioreactor.

GreenFuel’s technology uses a series of algae-filled bioreactors that convert flue stream emissions from power plants into food for the algae. The algae cleanse the flue emissions, and can be periodically harvested for use in biomass-based feeds, foods, fuels and other products.

The Aurantia-GreenFuel project at Holcim will now move to the construction of a 1,000 square-meter algae greenhouse and harvesting facilities adjacent to the cement plant. In the meantime, GreenFuel and Aurantia will continue to test algae growth rates with the cement plant’s flue gases.

Founded in 2001 on technology developed by former CTO and MIT researcher Isaac Berzin, GreenFuel has brought in $36 million in private funding. The company went through a restructuring in 2007, cutting half of its 50-person staff and installing board member and investor Bob Metcalfe as CEO until last spring, when Simon Upfill-Brown, a former executive at Dow Chemical Co., took the helm.

Investors in the company include Polaris Venture Partners, Access Private Equity and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.