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July 18, 2009
Waste-to-energy and biochemicals company Blue Marble Energy Corp. raised about $1 million in a Series A round of financing, with an eye to getting another $1 million as it achieves some milestones in coming months, a company executive told Clean Technology Insight.
Seattle-based Blue Marble developed an anaerobic process to convert algae, grass clippings and food waste into gases to power generators, and into biochemicals for the food and beverage industries, said Kelly Ogilvie, Blue Marble's chief executive, in an interview.
The lead investor in the Series A round was individual investor Rajiv Shah, who gets a seat on the company's board. Ogilvie said that Shah is involved in bottling and distributing sodas in eastern Africa. A regulatory filing on Blue Marble's fund-raising lists an address in Nairobi, Kenya, for Shah.
Ogilvie's vision for Blue Marble is for the company to generate bioenergy as a by-product of its green chemicals' manufacture, he said. The company is currently working with "a global food manufacturer and a local beverage manufacturer" on flavorings and fragrances that are made from organic waste.
"These will be certified organic flavors, which allow our commercial partners to have a different conversation with their customers& it's carbon-neutral chemicals, no toxic byproducts," he said.
The company, which relaunched as Blue Marble two years ago, expects that strategic partnerships with food and beverage industries' companies will be the source of further funding for development of its technology. Otherwise, it will seek more venture capital funding.
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November 10, 2008 (from voanews.com)
Most algae-to-energy researchers are growing algae in giant tanks. Blue Marble has a different plan: gather algae that are already growing in noxious blooms along coastlines.
In Dumas Bay, huge blooms of the algae called ulva - or sea lettuce - often rot in the water. That process uses up oxygen and kills marine life, and when the dead sea lettuce washes up on the beach, it creates a smell the neighbors hate.
Blue Marble President Kelly Ogilvie says these algae blooms are common around Puget Sound, but that is nothing compared to more polluted waterways elsewhere in the world, such as off the coast of Qingdao, China. This summer, the waters became clogged with unsightly green algae - up to 10 centimeters thick - disrupting training for Olympic sailors.
Floating algae sometimes fill Dumas Bay, although no one knows exactly why. "The bloom that occurred there was, I think, like 2,000 square kilometers," Ogilvie says, "and they pulled a million tons out of the water, and that is prologue to what is going to be happening on coastlines across the planet."
Warmer water can cause algae blooms, and some scientists think global warming is contributing to an increase in gigantic blooms. Nutrients from sewage dumping and fertilizer runoff also help algae flourish.
"If you think about what is actually happening in our oceans, the algae bloom crisis has just begun," Ogilvie says. "And if we can find a way to turn that new crisis into a solution for something else, by goodness, we're going to try and make a go at it."
Most companies doing algae-to-energy research focus on creating biofuels for cars or jets. Instead of liquid fuel, Blue Marble wants to convert algae into natural gas and biochemicals.
Along with private investment, Blue Marble has a contract with the Washington Department of Ecology to collect sea lettuce at two bays in Puget Sound. The department's Alice Kelly watched the recent harvest from the beach. She says her agency hopes this gets rid of the rotten egg smell neighbors have been complaining about without harming the fragile near-shore ecosystem and the creatures that live there.
"It's very important to protect that habitat," she stresses. "So we're walking a very fine line here between trying to deal with the excess odor problem and protect the near shore."
Blue Marble's approach provides that protection, she says, because its operation is based just offshore. They aren't dragging equipment across the beach. And today, it looks like the only bycatch has been other species of algae.
But some conservationists have big concerns about harvesting wild algae for fuel. One of them is Kevin Britton-Simmons, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington. He says a lot of unnatural algae blooms could be prevented by keeping fertilizer and other pollutants out of the water, and he insists what Blue Marble is doing is exploiting the problem instead of fixing it.
"I would prefer that my tax dollars be used to research and solve this problem instead," he says. "If we allow a business to develop that's dependent on this problem, what's gonna happen when we fix the problem? Will there then be pressure for this business to harvest natural populations of algae?"
Natural blooms are a valuable part of the food web, and Britton-Simmons says removing them could rob marine life of a major food source. He says it's also hard to distinguish between natural algae blooms and those caused by human activity.
Back on Dumas Bay, Kelly Ogilvie says his company has netted nearly 4,000 kilos of algae from the two harvests it's completed. The next step is to use bacteria to break down the algae into natural gas and various chemicals.
If all goes as planned, Ogilvie says Blue Marble's first batch of natural gas will be ready any day now.
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October 22, 2008
Bug eat bug. That's the business model of Blue Marble Energy.
The Seattle-based company has come up with a system for generating algal blooms in wastewater facilities and then feeding the algae to other microbes. These other microorganisms in turn metabolically convert the algae into high-value industrial chemicals like propyl butyrate, said CEO Kelly Ogilvie, speaking at the Dow Jones Alternative Energy Innovations conference taking place in Redwood City, Calif.
Why? That chemical sells for $801 a gallon, a heck of a lot more than $4 a gallon algae-based biodiesel, he noted. An algae biofuel company might get $500 worth of oils out of directly harvesting and processing algae. The indirect method proposed by Blue Marble can yield $4,000 worth of chemicals from a ton of algae. Harvesting a ton of the green goo costs about $190, he said.
And there are environmental benefits as well. Wastewater treatment isn't cheap or easy. Municipalities spend huge amounts of money dumping chlorine into wastewater to clean it out. Wild algae can take out nitrogen and other compounds from the water as well as the chemical-based processes without the environmental degradation and fossil fuel consumption involved in producing and spreading industrial chemicals in the first place. Plus, unlike chemically treated wastewater, the process yields a feedstock (algae) that can be converted into a valuable product. Other plant matter can be fed into it.
"Algae is the preferred feedstock, but we are really a biomass play," he said.
Optimism aside, there's a lot more to making money off algae that mixing up some sewage and letting nature take its course. There are over 50 algae companies, but only a few (GreenFuel Technologies, Solazyme, Sapphire, LiveFuels) have cracked many of the elements required to turn slime into something valuable.
Ogilvie admitted in fact that the ultimate output of chemicals from its process can vary, depending on the algae that was used. Variability can be the kiss of death in the chemistry industry.
The heart of the operation is a system called AGATE, or acid, gas and ammonia targeted extraction. It is a combination digester and fermenter. Digesters are used by other companies to decompose manure and turn it into methane. The fermenter is the part that converts the algae into an enhanced chemical byproduct.
The company has a modest prototype that can process 1/10th of a ton of biomass. Blue Marble is currently putting together a larger prototype in Brittany, France. It is now raising money for a 5,000 ton commercial-scale system.
Blue Marble has patents on much of its intellectual property, but this is also the sort of system that could be produced by large manufacturers like Siemens.
October 20, 2008
Oct. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Blue Marble Energy Corp., a pioneering bio-energy firm, named five internationally respected business, scientific and political leaders to its corporate advisory board.
The advisory board consists of former Washington State Governor Gary Locke; Dr. Nguyen Minh, the former head of General Electric's Global Science Division; David Lahaie, the CEO of Evergreen Recycling of Seattle and a recognized expert in materials recovery; Sidney Rittenberg, once a personal advisor to Mao Zedong and a legendary Western figure in modern China; and Donald Stark, a co-founder of Gogerty Stark Marriott, a well-known political and public affairs consulting firm.
"We are extraordinarily fortunate to have attracted this level of expertise and experience to help guide Blue Marble Energy," said Kelly Ogilvie, the CEO of Blue Marble Energy. "We now have access to some of the best and most thoughtful minds in the business, scientific and political worlds. Their guidance will be enormously important as we continue to develop groundbreaking green technologies to counter the effects of human-made pollution and develop viable alternatives to petroleum-based energy."
Blue Marble Energy Corp., based in Seattle, is a bio-energy company that performs multiple green business functions. It collects (harvests) nuisance algae, usually under contract either to public jurisdictions or private manufacturing concerns. It then treats the algae with a proprietary process to yield a wide range of high-value energy and industrial products, including bio-gas, esters, and anhydrous ammonia (nitrogen, or fertilizer). The proprietary process, known as AGATE (Acid Gas and Ammonia Targeted Extraction) was developed by BME scientists.
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