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November 19, 2009
Colorado-based Solix Biofuels has raised USD500,000 in convertible note funding, according to TechRockies. The firm is developing technology to produce algae-based biofuel. Solix feeds carbon dioxide into bioreactors to grow algae which can be harvested to produce biofuels and chemical feedstock.
In July, the firm raised USD16.8m in a Series A funding round from investors including Shanghai Alliance Investment,I2BF Venture Capital and Valero Energy. Solix is building a pilot facility in partnership with Southern Ute Alternative Energy. The first phase will be completed next year and will include four acres of closed algae photobioreactors . The firm claims its technology can produce approximately five times more fuel per acre than soy-based biodiesel.
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July 23, 2009
Solix Biofuels Inc. said Thursday it has started the production of oil made from algae at its Coyote Gulch Demonstration Facility, with full-scale commercial operation set for late summer.
Solix, a Colorado State University startup company based in Fort Collins, has been working on techniques to produce renewable, biologically based fuels from microscopic algae organisms.
"We are ready to prove to the world the viability of algae as an alternative to petroleum-based fuels," Solix COO Rich Schoonover said in a statement.
Coyote Gulch is located on a two-acre site in the Durango area on land provided by the Southern Ute tribe.
Algal oil production began July 16, Solix said. It said Coyote Gulch is expected to produce the equivalent of 3,000 gallons per acre per year of algal oil by late 2009.
Solix, started in 2006 and financed by private equity, is an outgrowth of the U.S. Department of Energy's Aquatic Species Program, launched in 1978 to research ways to produce biodiesel fuel from algae.
Others in the field include oil giant Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX), based in San Ramon, Calif., which signed a contract with Golden's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in November 2007 to pursue algae-based fuels.
Experts estimate the organisms can make as much as 8,000 to 10,000 gallons of oil per year per acre, compared to 50 or 60 gallons per year using soybeans, 20 gallons using corn, and 150 gallons using canola or rapeseeds.
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July 1, 2009 (from Earth2tech.com)
Today 3-year-old Solix Biofuels, which has some similarities with GreenFuel (it uses closed photobioreactors to grow algae, then turns it into biofuels and feedstocks for the chemical industry), shows it, too, is bucking up in the downturn - adding another $1.3 million to its Series A financing round, and announcing plans to start a commercial-scale demonstration of its technology within two months (" late summer" ) in southwestern Colorado.
These new funds - bringing the company's total Series A to $16.8 million - come from international investment group Shanghai Alliance Investment Ltd., or SAIL, and point to expansion in Asia. That's the plan, anyway, according to Solix CEO Doug Henston. In a release this morning, he said a relationship with SAIL will help Solix deploy its technology internationally, particularly in Asia.
Before SAIL's $1.3 million investment, Solix already had some heavyweight backers - notably the largest U.S. oil refinery operator, Valero Energy - as part of an unusual mix. The first set of investors, announced back in November 2008, also included Southern Ute Alternative Energy, which manages clean power investments for the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, plus I2BF Venture Capital, Bohemian Investments and Infield Capital.
Solix's Series A hardly matches the scale of last year's record-breaking boom, when a $50 million round for Sapphire Energy helped bump the total investment in algae startups to $84 million during the second quarter. But it could give us an example of how players in the next generation of algae biofuel startups find - or ignore - lessons from GreenFuel about mismanagement of risky, high-cost projects in a nascent market and down economy.
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November 10, 2008
A Colorado company will break ground early next year on an algae farm that is intended to produce thousands of gallons of substitutes for gasoline and diesel at a rate per acre far higher than current biofuel projects.
Solix Biofuels, of Fort Collins, said on Monday that it had raised $15.5 million in capital and would begin with a five-acre plot to produce "biocrude.''That will in turn be shipped to an oil refinery in place of crude oil, according to Douglas R. Henston, the company chief executive.
Investors include the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, on whose reservation, near Durango, the farm will be located; Valero Energy Corporation., the refinery operator; and Infield Capital, an investment fund.
Algae has held special appeal for renewable energy researchers - and some investors - because the organism readily converts sunlight and carbon dioxide into a hydrocarbon fuel, producing an oil that can harvested for use as biodiesel. And the more CO2 present, the faster the algae grows. That holds the promise of cleaner-burning fuels that simultaneously scrub CO2 from the atmosphere during their production.
Algae can also regenerate at a remarkable rate, doubling its volume in a matter of hours under the right conditions, and yielding far more of its body weight in oil than any biofuel feed stock currently in use.
Solix has already achieved production of 1,500 gallons an acre per year at a test plot in Fort Collins, and the company is expecting yields of 2,500 to 3,000 gallons an acre per year, said Mr. Henston.
In contrast, soybeans, the main source of biodiesel used in this country, yields 50 to 70 gallons per acre.
But creating the right conditions for algae to serve as a biofuel feed stock at commercial scale remains an expensive proposition. Carbon dioxide needs be pumped in from outside sources to induce the kind of rapid growth needed to make the process economically feasible. Water temperatures, too, need to be carefully controlled.
Solix uses a "photo-bioreactor system" to overcome these hurdles. These consist of long, narrow, sealed containers, immersed in water, into which carbon dioxide - harvested from a nearby natural gas well - and organic nutrients are circulated. Algae take hydrogen atoms from the water and carbon atoms from the carbon dioxide, to produce a hydrocarbon liquid, which is then recovered by centrifuge or solvent extraction.
The algae strain to be used in Colorado is a fresh-water variety, but other varieties, including marine algae, can be used, Mr. Henston said, because the system is "species agnostic.''
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October 9, 2008
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (CBS4)
Running your car on fuel made from algae is getting closer to reality thanks to research being done in Fort Collins.
When CBS4 first reported on the idea dreamed up by a startup in Fort Collins and CSU engineers of producing oil derived from fast-growing algae and turning it into biodiesel, project leaders just starting to figure out if it would actually work.
Colorado State University's Engines and Energy Conversion lab and Solix Biofuels Inc. are now much closer to large scale production of the fuel source derived from some of the fastest-growing organisms on the planet.
Project leaders say algae is the fuel crop of the future. It can produce 100 times more oil than crops like soybeans. Soybeans, canola and other soil-tilled crops are currently being used to produce biodiesel. Cooking oil is also powering some vehicles.
Prof. Bryan Willson showed CBS4 an algae generator at the lab that runs on sunlight and carbon dioxide (a photo-bioreactor system).
"You can see the bubbles. We're bubbling a mixture of air and carbon dioxide," he said. "It's a system we put together to grow algae at very high rates under the conditions we need to accumulate significant amounts of oil."
Eventually the algae ends up as a concentrated green paste. Once the water is removed it is about 1/3 oil.
The idea is to build acres of algae generators close to a carbon dioxide source like a power plant or brewery.
Doug Henston, Solix's CEO, told CBS4 they are experimenting with better ways to grow extra oily algae and pushing to cut the cost of producing a barrel of algae oil so it can be competitive with the wholesale price of crude petroleum.
"Where our current technology is, were probably competitive somewhere around $150 a barrel," he said.
"Somewhere between $70 and $100 a barrel ... we're trying to push down towards that range because in the long term you've got to be able to compete with the current energy markets."
Next spring Solix and CSU plan to make their first large algae farm with acres of larger generators.
They are hopeful that in less than 3 years algae will be in commercial production, powering vehicles with algae biodiesel.
The researchers say growing algae uses much less water than traditional crops and it doesn't matter if the water is fresh or salty, clean or dirty -- it all works for growing this new source of biofuel.
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