The company cautions that this is a first look at the impact of these new technologies that is subject to large-scale revision. OriginOil will make the model available to algae producers at no charge for their business planning and intends to solicit private input from the algae industry to improve it continuously.

OriginOil’s model analyzes the entire algae production process at scale, integrating the latest advances in growth, harvesting and fuel conversion. In the lowest-cost scenario, algae harvested using OriginOil’s Algae Appliance is blended with waste feedstocks and converted onsite to achieve a modeled production cost of $2.28 per gallon for gasoline or diesel. This cost roughly doubles to $5.44/gallon ($1.44/Liter) when using pure algae feedstocks. The model assumes a production footprint of at least 50 hectares (124 acres).

Low cost and ready availability of waste products are behind plans to implement a blending strategy that includes algae for its high energy content and petrochemical profile. In December 2011, the Defense Logistics Agency announced the single largest purchase of biofuel in US history, using a blend of algae and waste cooking oil.

President Obama spoke about the potential of algae biomass to displace 17% of our current consumption of petroleum. This is not unreasonable given recent improvements in biomass harvesting and collection efficiencies and other technology enhancements being made by companies like OriginOil in partnership with the INL for further developing and validating these technologies.

The lowering of these costs is the result of integrating harvesting and collection preprocessing strategies that can benefit from the blending of the physical and chemical properties of different combinations of biomass feedstocks and other waste products.

—OriginOil scientific advisor, Dr. Thomas H. Ulrich

Dr. Ulrich was previously an Advisory Scientist at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and is a key contributor to developing the Blendable Feedstock Standard in which OriginOil is collaborating with the US Department of Energy (DOE).

What we need now are well funded and coordinated efforts by industry and government to integrate and test the best of these diverse technology enhancements. It is very important to validate these promising technologies at the pilot as well as at the commercial production scales. Government support of such scaled projects is appropriate and critical to our nation’s energy independence.

—Thomas Ulrich