Sapphire, Linde to scale up algae hydrothermal treatment process

Sapphire Energy Inc., one of the world leaders in algae-based green crude oil production, and the technology company The Linde Group announced they will expand their partnership to commercialize a new industrial-scale conversion technology needed to upgrade algae biomass into crude oil. Together, the companies will refine the hydrothermal treatment process developed and operated today by Sapphire Energy at pilot scale. In addition, they will jointly license and market the technology into an expanded list of industries, including algae, municipal solid waste and farm waste, in order to upgrade other biomass sources into energy. The agreement spans a minimum of five years through the development of Sapphire Energy’s first commercial-scale, algae-to-energy production facility.

“Sapphire Energy is very pleased to build upon its already successful strategic partnership with Linde to build a commercial oil upgrading process designed to increase yield and lower the cost of crude oil production,” said Cynthia ‘CJ’ Warner, CEO and chairman of Sapphire Energy. “Large energy projects like we are building require very significant partnerships to fund the development of new technologies and make available engineering resources needed to bring these projects on line at commercial scale. We think Linde is a perfect partner to help Sapphire achieve this goal.”

“We have been working with Sapphire Energy for two years to develop a cost-efficient CO2 delivery system for commercial algae production,” said Professor Aldo Belloni, member of the executive board of Linde AG. “We have become confident with the company’s expertise and its capability to produce a low-carbon and economic energy source from algae. After the positive experience gained, we decided to intensify our cooperation with Sapphire. Based upon our profound engineering expertise, we will contribute to further develop and scale up Sapphire’s algae-to-crude-oil technology.”

This growing partnership builds upon Linde’s and Sapphire Energy’s agreement to develop a low-cost, CO2 management system for open pond, algae-to-fuel production, which was previously announced May 2011. Linde, the leading merchant CO2 supplier in the U.S., also became the exclusive supplier of CO2 for Sapphire Energy`s commercial demonstration, algae-to-energy facility in Columbus, N.M. Today, this Green Crude Farm is operating year-round and producing barrels of crude oil daily.