The Algae Appliance
The Algae Appliance™ is our standardized algae harvesting product line, providing a low energy, chemical-free, continuous flow ‘wet harvest’ system to efficiently dewater, rupture cell walls if needed, and then concentrate the microscopic algae harvest.
As of March 2013, there are machines installed or on the way to a dozen university, government and industry customers for evaluation and testing. Customers are quickly turning to OriginOil because:
- The word is out that conventional methods aren’t effective with a crop that has so much water — as great as 1000 to 1.
- The Algae Appliance is highly reliable; we know this from months of field testing.
- More and more people in the industry have seen this machine work.
- The new algae industry is steadily expanding, in the U.S. and the rest of the world.
Our breakthrough concentration technology can help algae growers continuously harvest and concentrate from two to 285 liters per minute of algae water.
All Algae Appliances use our Single Step Extraction™ technology for a chemical-free, low-energy and high continuous flow harvest at very low capital and operating costs.
Process Overview
The Algae Appliance is typically located on premises at the algae growth facility.
When ready for harvesting, the dilute microalgae culture is fed directly from the growth systems into the Algae Appliance without any prior pretreatment or concentration. Each system is equipped with its own integrated control system that manages the operational settings for flocculating (clumping) and for “lysing” of algae cell walls (cell wall rupture).
As the raw algae passes through the Algae Appliance, it is subjected to tuned electromagnetic pulses. The system operation consists of two integrated stages:
- First stage: high-flow, low-energy, chemical-free flocculation.
- Optional: cell wall rupture where desired.
- Second stage: concentration to remove up to 99.9% of the water, achieving a solids concentration in excess of 5%.
(Optional devices are available to achieve higher solids concentration downstream from the Algae Appliance.)
Algae Appliance Models
Now shipping, Algae Appliance models are rated by their maximum capacity to process algae dilute continuously, shown in liters per minute.
Our Model 4 system can harvest two to four liters per minute (product page).
Our Model 200 can harvest up to 200 liters per minute (product page).
OriginOil has also shipped harvesting systems rated at 40 and 285 liters per minute. All systems beyond the Model 20 are custom-quoted at this time.
Continue to Algae Appliance Model 4»
