A Cambridge, Massachusetts-based start-up has emerged from stealth operations with a process that it says can produce transportation fuel from sunlight and carbon dioxide (CO2) without the need for growing biomass like corn, switchgrass or algae.
Joule Biotechnologies, Inc. says it has achieved a bioengineering breakthrough that can harnesses sunlight to directly convert CO2 into liquid energy the company is calling SolarFuel™.
Joule said its Helioculture process uses highly-engineered
photosynthetic organisms to catalyze the conversion of sunlight and CO2. The company said the process is scalable and requires no agriculture land or fresh water to produce 20,000 gallons of renewable ethanol or hydrocarbons per acre
annually.
The company revealed few details about the nature of the photosynthetic organisms, claiming the need to protect trade secrets until a patent was registered.
Joule’s chief executive Bill Sims told the Wall Street Journal: “We’re not a biofuel company, because biofuels are biomass-derived; our technology leverages a highly synthetic organism to create transportation fuels and chemicals. We don’t have an intermediary that has to be grown or transported, it’s a direct-to-product process.”
Joule said SolarFuel meets today’s vehicle fuel specifications
and infrastructure, and is expected to achieve widespread production at
the energy equivalent of less than $50 per barrel.
The company’s first
product offering, SolarEthanol™ fuel, will be ready for
commercial-scale development in 2010, according to a press release.
The company was founded in 2007 by Flagship Ventures, though it did not say how much money the company has raised from the investment firm.
Noubar Afeyan, founder and chairman of Joule Biotechnologies said in a statement that the company is “creating an entirely novel solution that combines the best of solar energy and biofuels, while eliminating their respective weaknesses. The result is a system that can operate at very large scale and provide efficient conversion and storage of solar power without relying on fossil or agricultural products as raw materials.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that the company has applied for a U.S. Department of Energy grant under the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy program; and also that CEO Sims was previously the chief Executive of Color Kinetics Inc., which was acquired by Royal Philips Electronics in 2007 for approximately $800 million.
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