American company Sapphire Energy, a world leader in algae-based green oil production, working with the Linde Group, are to commercialise a new industrial-scale conversion technology needed to upgrade algae biomass into oil.
Together, the companies will refine the hydrothermal treatment process developed and currently operated by Sapphire Energy at pilot-scale.
In addition, they will jointly license and market the technology into an expanded list of industries, including algae, municipal solid waste, and farm waste, in order to upgrade other biomass sources into energy.
The agreement will run for at least five years through the development of Sapphire Energy’s first commercial scale, algae-to-energy production facility.
Cynthia “C” Warner, CEO and chairman of Sapphire, said: “Large energy projects like we are building require very significant partnerships to fund the development of new technologies and make available engineering resources needed to bring these projects on line at commercial scale.
“We think Linde is a perfect partner to help Sapphire achieve this goal.”
Professor Aldo Belloni, a member of Linde’s board, said of the relationship and progress: “We have been working with Sapphire Energy for two years to develop a cost-efficient CO2 delivery system for commercial algae production.
“We have become confident with the company’s expertise and its capability to produce a low carbon and economic energy source from algae. After the positive experience gained, we decided to intensify our co-operation with Sapphire.”
Basically, the partnership will push ahead with developing a “low cost”, CO2 management system for open pond, algae-to-fuel production, which was previously announced in May 2011.
Linde, the leading merchant CO2 supplier in the US and a major supplier of exotic gases to the North Sea offshore industry, will become the exclusive supplier of CO2 for Sapphire Energy’s commercial demonstration, algae-to-energy facility in Columbus, New Mexico.
This “green crude” algae farm is operating year-round and producing an undisclosed number of barrels of oil per day.
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