Startup to Craft Industrial Chemicals From Human Sewage—Yeah!

Bug eat bug. That’s the business model of Blue Marble Energy.

The Seattle-based company has come up with a system for generating algal blooms in wastewater facilities and then feeding the algae to other microbes. These other microorganisms in turn metabolically convert the algae into high-value industrial chemicals like propyl butyrate, said CEO Kelly Ogilvie, speaking at the Dow Jones Alternative Energy Innovations conference taking place in Redwood City, Calif.

Why? That chemical sells for $801 a gallon, a heck of a lot more than $4 a gallon algae-based biodiesel, he noted. An algae biofuel company might get $500 worth of oils out of directly harvesting and processing algae. The indirect method proposed by Blue Marble can yield $4,000 worth of chemicals from a ton of algae. Harvesting a ton of the green goo costs about $190, he said.

And there are environmental benefits as well. Wastewater treatment isn’t cheap or easy. Municipalities spend huge amounts of money dumping chlorine into wastewater to clean it out. Wild algae can take out nitrogen and other compounds from the water as well as the chemical-based processes without the environmental degradation and fossil fuel consumption involved in producing and spreading industrial chemicals in the first place. Plus, unlike chemically treated wastewater, the process yields a feedstock (algae) that can be converted into a valuable product. Other plant matter can be fed into it.

“Algae is the preferred feedstock, but we are really a biomass play,� he said.

Optimism aside, there's a lot more to making money off algae that mixing up some sewage and letting nature take its course. There are over 50 algae companies, but only a few (GreenFuel Technologies, Solazyme, Sapphire, LiveFuels) have cracked many of the elements required to turn slime into something valuable.

Ogilvie admitted in fact that the ultimate output of chemicals from its process can vary, depending on the algae that was used. Variability can be the kiss of death in the chemistry industry.

The heart of the operation is a system called AGATE, or acid, gas and ammonia targeted extraction. It is a combination digester and fermenter. Digesters are used by other companies to decompose manure and turn it into methane. The fermenter is the part that converts the algae into an enhanced chemical byproduct.

The company has a modest prototype that can process 1/10^th of a ton of biomass. Blue Marble is currently putting together a larger prototype in Brittany, France. It is now raising money for a 5,000 ton commercial-scale system.

Blue Marble has patents on much of its intellectual property, but this is also the sort of system that could be produced by large manufacturers like Siemens.

Microorganisms are going to be named the greentech employees of the century, mark my words. They can work in filth, don’t take breaks and you can squeeze out their entrails without risking a lawsuit. You can’t even do that with temps anymore. Sure, we might all contract a futuristic, incurable case of dysentery from a microbe experiment gone awry, but think of the cost savings.

Another company mining microbes for industrial chemicals is Genomatica, funded by Draper Fisher Jurvetson.