Novozymes joins Nidus Partners to advance new energy technologies from research to commercialization
06 September 2011
Novozymes has joined Nidus Partners LP as a corporate partner and will collaborate with Nidus and its other partners Bunge Limited and Monsanto Company to select and to develop early-stage energy technologies.
Launched in September 2010, Nidus uses its partners to identify market opportunities and experienced entrepreneurs to find and develop technologies that address these market needs. Nidus has reviewed hundreds of technologies resulting in three start-ups.
Partners have a right of first offer for the innovations developed through Nidus. A limited number of additional partners with the appropriate market and technical expertise will be invited to the partnership.
Technologies chosen by Nidus must meet a market need, have potential for a strong intellectual property position and offer a principal investigator willing to collaborate to commercialize the technology. Examples of Nidus companies include:
Electrochaea: a renewable natural gas technology that converts waste carbon dioxide from existing manufacturing and stranded electric power into methane.
Xtend Energy: manufacturer of ultra-high-performance Lithium-ion battery cathode materials to help address the issues of cost and performance for electric vehicle batteries.
Electrochaea sounds like the 80%-efficient archaea-mediated juice-to-methane trick discovered just a year or two ago. If this can be made cheaply enough to e.g. process excess off-peak electricity, islands like Aruba could shut down their oil-fired plants much of the time and generate fuel for CNG vehicles with the overnight excesses. The impact in some places could be enormous.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 07 September 2011 at 08:16 AM