Wellington
One of the more interesting aspects of Aquaflow BionomicCorporation’s deal with CRI Catalyst Company of theUSA, is having bargaining chips or cards in your hand.
Last September Marlborough-based Aquaflow announced a partnership of its wild-algae biofuelgenerating technology project with Texas’ CRI.
The wild algae has a dual ability to clean water and produce a ‘green crude’ (like black butwithout the millions of years of heat and pressure). CRI has a catalyst and process to convert thisgreen crude into hydrocarbon fuels and blend stocks in typically a few hours.
CRI calls this proprietary technology Integrated Hydropyrolysis and Hydroconversion (IH2) –which can also convert biomass directly into renewable gasoline, jetfuel and diesel. CRI is also asubsidiary of Shell Oil (who recently sold its NZ downstream assets from refining to retail to ZEnergy).
Whether or not Aquaflow’s promotion and use of wild algae (localised to the region) will be theroute to market for what is plethora of global algae-to-oil projects, is still to be determined.(See here for a small list of such projects).
Aquaflow director Nick Gerritsen says using algae that naturally exist in an area is much morecost-effective and water-cleansing that attempting to create mono-cultures of algae specifically forits lipid oil production.
There’s also the question of whether a globally scalable algae focused solution will be deemedriskier if genetically modified species are used.
But, presumably based on Aquaflow’s understanding of how to optimise algae growth, harvest andproduction of multi-components, (for everything from fertiliser to bioenergy feedstocks),Gerritsen’s obviously been able to have other ‘conversations’ with CRI.
That includes the introduction of CRI’s IH2 technology to New Zealand – just in time for thegrowing quantities of biomass we produce (think forestry, gorse, solid waste).
The ability (as stated by Aquaflow and CRI admittedly) to convert biomass into renewabletransport fuels, at close to the current price of crude oil puts Aquaflow in an interesting positionin the country’s energy security stakes.
Gerritsen’s after investment beyond the $8.5 million already ponyed up by Aquaflow’sinvestors over the past six years, to crank up the IH2 process (and refineries) in New Zealand.
The point is, without some cards in their hand (or a bit of IP), Aquaflow wouldn’t be in aposition to leverage CRI’s technology into New Zealand.
Now Aquaflow’s a long way from getting any sort of IH2 process off the ground – but it is aheck of a lot closer than it would’ve been without its own smarts to bargain with in the firstplace.
A bit of a case of ‘what you know’ combining with ‘who you know’ to create a ‘do youknow what we can do for you’.