Aquaflow Bionomic Corp., a New Zealand-based algae technology company, recently announced its progress in developing a range of 20 high-value biobased chemicals from wild algae. According to Aquaflow, the company has created a library of more than 100 chemical compounds that have been isolated from its naturally occurring feedstock.

A number of the chemicals targeted by Aquaflow appear on the U.S. DOE’s list of top value-added chemicals from biomass sugars and synthetic gas. “This means we can target large, global market sectors that touch on everybody,” said Aquaflow Director Nick Gerritsen. “Our technology can create clean, renewable fuels, remediate wastewater and now produce high-value chemicals. This breakthrough shows once again the equivalence of Aquaflow green crude to fossil crude and its diversity of products.” In fact, Gerritsen notes that one of his company’s most exciting discoveries has been in the production of biopolymers from pyrrolidinones.

Unlike most algae-technology developers, Aquaflow does not cultivate algae. Rather, the company aims to harvest wild algae from existing ecosystems. “Aquaflow harvests wild algae that occur naturally wherever there is water and nutrients—for example, oxidation pond systems, and rivers and lakes,” Gerritsen said. “As such, by harvesting the algae we can clean up the water to either improve discharge quality or enabling it to be reused. The algae paste is then converted into green crude—an equivalent to fossil crude oil. From the green crude, we are then able to take the biocompounds through to a range of fuels and chemicals. The whole idea is not to deploy any capital in the cultivation of algae.”

The harvesting technique employed by Aquaflow includes the use of a relatively small, energy-efficient system. According to Gerritsen, the entire harvesting apparatus fits into a single 40-foot shipping container, which makes it easy to deploy the system in a wide range of site locations. The resulting algae do not need to be dried to be processed in Aquaflow’s biorefinery system. Rather, the system is designed to utilize wet algae feedstock.

Aquaflow’s biorefinery process features catalysts that have been developed and patented in-house. Gerritsen describes the technology as replicating the natural production of fossil-based crude oil. “So, with this feedstock our technology replicates the natural process of heat and pressure,” he said. “In this sense we speed up nature—in many respects a time machine that converts fresh biomass in real time.”

According to Gerretsen, Aquaflow could begin initial production of biochemicals in 2011 with the production of high-value fuels to follow at a later date. However, he also noted that the specific timeframe is dependent on the procurement of necessary capital.

Aquaflow recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with California-based Impulse Devices Inc., a leader in high-pressure cavitation technology that is currently working to develop the technological capacity required for acoustic inertial confinement fusion. Aquaflow is also part of an ongoing U.S. DOE cooperative agreement project with Honeywell’s UOP to demonstrate a process to capture carbon dioxide in the cultivation of algae.