OriginOil’s patent-pending, breakthrough technology can help provide the world with an endless supply of cost-competitive and environmentally-friendly oil to displace petroleum.

Next Generation Technology

OriginOil is proving its next-generation technology to greatly enhance algae biomass harvesting and oil extraction. This allows scalable industrialization to make algae a high-yield, cost-competitive replacement for petroleum.

By focusing on the “midstream”, OriginOil is addressing the most important bottleneck in commercial algae production.

OriginOil’s focus on extraction provides the critical connection between algae growers and refiners. Click to enlarge.

Technology Challenges

There are three primary challenges to cost-effective algae production:

1. Algae grow suspended in large volumes of water. Using conventional methods, a mature algae culture must be concentrated before oil can be extracted from each cell. This de-watering stage is energy-intensive, and typically requires chemical additives and expensive capital equipment.
2. Algae are protected by a tough cell wall. That wall must be cracked – an energy-intensive process – to extract the oil. The challenge is to maximize oil yield by ‘cracking’ as many of the algae cells as possible with the smallest amount of energy.
3. Algae production is an energy-intensive process. In order to achieve economic viability, it is critical that energy is recovered in every possible way. In addition to oil and biomass, algae produce valuable gases, including hydrogen. These must be harvested to achieve the best possible energy balance.

Patent-Pending Technology

OriginOil’s suite of patent-pending technologies and process innovations intends to address these specific challenges.

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