The Environment-Friendly Oil

Algae can take many forms, such as seaweed (macro-algae) and kelp. But for oil we use micro-algae, as found in outdoor ponds. Micro-algae is actually a highly efficient biological factory capable of taking carbon dioxide (CO2), a waste product, and converting it into a high-density natural oil through photosynthesis. This is algae oil, also known as algal oil.

Much of the world’s petroleum is actually made up of algae that decomposed over hundreds of millions of years. But by drilling and burning that oil now, we are releasing the carbon dioxide that was absorbed long ago. This “carbon positive" effect is what causes global warming.

Algae cultivated today absorbs CO2 today. Burning it releases only what it absorbed in the first place, resulting in a balanced “carbon neutral” effect. This makes algae oil an environment-friendly oil.

Oil Generation from Algae

Light Cycle Algae reproduce by cellular division. They divide and divide until they fill the space they occupy and have consumed all of the nutrients in it. In the right environment, fresh algae cells grow and divide on a rapidly growing path, absorbing all available nutrients and light energy. This is called light cycle photosynthesis.

Dark Cycle When the concentration of algae is high enough that light does not penetrate through the entire culture, the algae moves into a light-limited linear phase where it grows slower. This is called dark cycle photosynthesis. When the algae population fills the entire growth vessel and reaches a terminal density, it stops growing and can start to generate oil.

Feeding and Starving As algae growth slows (through starvation) it generates more oil. Therefore, an industrialized system must optimize growth cycles to induce oil production in the algae cells. In the “feed” phase, nutrients and light must penetrate to all the algae. Likewise, the system must suppress these same factors for the “starve” phase. These are key challenges of algae oil production.

OriginOil’s industrial process, with its proprietary devices and methods, optimizes all these variables to help algae cells grow at their natural maximum rate – accomplishing a doubling of the algae population in as little as a few hours. The same process then manages the oil-generating, harvesting and extraction cycles. All the diverse productivity challenges in each phase are addressed by the OriginOil process – making high-speed, round-the-clock industrial production of new oil a reality.

Instead of waiting hundreds of millions years for algae to become oil, OriginOil’s breakthrough process transforms algae into oil in a matter of days.

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