What’s It All About, Algae?

Seambiotic, located in Ashkelon, Israel, uses eight raceway/paddle-wheel open-ponds for algae cultivation, fed by C02 flue-gas from a nearby Israeli Electric Corporation power plant. The company employs genetic optimization and has teamed up with Inventure Chemical to turn the algae into fuel.  

And now it has a new CEO.  Daniel Chinn is replacing founder and previous CEO Amnon Bechar who will now assume the position of COO.  Mr. Chinn is a GP at Israel Seed Partners and has a background in M&A and law. 

The last algae company helmed by a VC in a management switch was GreenFuels led by IT-guru Bob Metcalfe.  GreenFuels was the proud winner of the Frost & Sullivan Technology Innovation of the Year Award and oxidizer of $70 million in VC.  May they Rest in Peace.

Like most algae farmers, Seambiotic expects to harvest the algae for nutraceuticals and biofuel.  The CO2 from a nearby power plant as feedstock makes some sense.  I remain curious about where they're going to get a constant large supply of water and nutrients in a water-challenged, resource-starved nation.

Summer 2009 saw an enormous amount of activity in algal biofuels.  Some called it "The Summer of Algae."  I'll have to settle for calling it the "Summer of Algae Hype" until a company actually produces algae-based biofuels in volume at a price close to "pump-parity."
 
Recent announcements have included:

• Sapphire Energy's plans to build a 300 acre integrated algal bio-refinery in New Mexico.

• BP investing $10 million in Martek. 

• Exxon pledging $300 million to Synthetic Genomics for algae research. 

• LiveFuels changed course to become a fish aquaculturist.

• Solazyme received $45 million in funding and was selected by the Pentagon to develop algal biofuels for the Navy.

• CMEA announced an investment in San Diego-based Biolight Harvesting. 

• Aurora Biofuels made strides in algal fuel production and CO2 consumption.

• BioProcess Algae developed a proprietary photo bioreactor.

• Algenol Biofuels is working with Dow Chemical to efficiently produce commercial quantities of ethanol directly from algae.

More on algae's future as a biofuel feedstock to come.