Why Algae?

Because algae is the worlds most efficient photosynthasizing plant. It is a single celled organizm dedicated to duplicateing itself and storing the suns energy in the form of oil, reaching as high as 80% oil/biomass ratio for some species. This is dramatically different than terestial plants that dedicate most of their energy to growing stocks and non-productive mass. On the surface when you look at the productivity of different oil producing agricultural biodiesel feedstocks it is easy to see why algae can scale to meet our demand for liquid transportation fuels. Because the difference is so striking it is hard to tell how productive other oil seed products are. Europs leading oil seed producing plant, rapeseed, produces 127 gallons/acre/year. Palm oil produces an astonishing 635 gallons/acre/year but that is nothing compared to what Pacific Rim can produce in their bioreactors, producing over 100,000 gallons of oil/acre/year. Although this is significant it is by no means a clear replacement for petroleum due to the upfront costs of enclosed photobioreactors in general. In a lab environment we were able to prove price parity with petroleum. Now it is a matter of proving it outside in a beta commercial setting.

 

Co-Product and By-Product Opportunties

There are a number of different processes which will achieve a wide variety of co-products and by-products. Pacific Rim is looking to separate the algae oil from the biomass creating two lines of co-products. Our algae requires CO2 for mass growth, and to achieve the volumes necessary to give the end products a highly competitive price point. It is the quality of the CO2 that we capture though which will dedermine what products can be produced. There are two central by-products, oil and BioMass which intern can produce several co-product opportunties, depending on the relevant additives associated with the harvested CO2.

 

Environmental Opportunties

In addition to the products produced from algae,there are three very significant benefits which unfortunately do not have a direct economic benefit tied to it. In the process of growing algae, it needs to sequester large volumes of CO2, preferably from British Columbias major green house gas emittors. The resulting potential biofuels also displace an equal volume of petroleum diesel. Algae biodiesel is biodegradable, and when biodiesel from algae is bruned, it also has significantly fewer toxins such as:

• Being virtually free of both sulfur and aromatics
• Reduction of soot emissions by 40-60%
• Reduction of carbon monoxide (CO) emissions by 10-50%
• Reduction of hydrocarbon emissions by 10-50%
• Emitts fewer cancer causing componds overall such as
  • Phenanthren by 97%
  • Benzofloroanthen by 56%
  • Benzapyren by 71%
  • Aldehydes and aromatic componds by 13%
  • Nitrus oxide (NOx) by 5-10%

Diesel engines simply run cleaner and better lubricated with biodiesel.

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