OriginOil Announces the Completion of Phase 1 Research Project with Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory

Business Wire.com
October 07, 2009 05:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Senior scientist applauds collaboration leading to first-ever presentation of productivity model

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--OriginOil, Inc. (OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to transform algae, the most promising source of renewable oil, into a true competitor to petroleum, today announced the completion of Phase 1 of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory (INL).

OriginOil has been working with INL to develop a process model for the commercial production of algae for biofuels and other value-added products. Phase 1 of the CRADA focused on developing a comprehensive mass-energy balance of OriginOil's proprietary process. This helped the company develop its comprehensive productivity model recently presented to the National Algae Association's Quarterly Forum in Houston, Texas. INL researchers provided core data on the projected efficiency and recovery values for the various steps involved in the algae-growing process, including lipid and biomass production from algae.

"Algae represent a potential key biomass resource for a sustainable bioenergy industry," said Tom Ulrich, INL Senior Advisory Scientist. "Collaboration with OriginOil has been encouraging, especially the modeling of their algae growth and production process. Phase 2 of the CRADA will focus on further process validation, economic modeling and improved biomass logistics for the scale up of algae biomass production."

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