Algenol

Algenol Biofuels Inc.

Type	Private
Industry	Biofuels
Founder	Paul Woods, Craig Smith, Ed Legere, Alejandro Gonzalez
Headquarters	Fort Myers, Florida
Revenue	US$ 3.1 million
Number of employees	127
Website	www.algenol.com

Algenol, founded in 2006, headquartered in Fort Myers, Florida, Algenol is an industrial biotechnology company that is commercializing patented algae technology for production of ethanol and other fuels. The technology enables the production of the four most important fuels (ethanol, gasoline, jet, and diesel fuel) using a proprietary process involving algae, sunlight, carbon dioxide and salt water.

In 2008 the company announced it would begin commercial production of Ethanol by 2009 in the Sonoran Desert in northwest Mexico. This seems not to have happened though and as of 2015 they are still not in commercial production. In October 2015 Paul Woods, the founder, resigned and the company announced they were laying off 25% of the staff and changing to a “water treatment and carbon capture now, and maybe fuels later” focus. In 2016, Algenol celebrated its 10th Anniversary and added algae-based sustainable products to its portfolio. Their name changed to Algenol Biotech LLC, and they are focusing on algae-based product development and manufacturing.

Algenol’s biofuel technology potentially allows production of the four most important fuels (ethanol, gasoline, jet, and diesel fuel) for around $1.27 per gallon each at production levels of 8,000 total gallons of liquid fuel per acre per year, but to date has not been successfully implemented in commercial production. Potentially the fuel would be produced with a 60% reduction in carbon footprint and could offer customers savings of 75 cents a gallon. The technology could produce high yields and relies on patented photobioreactors and proprietary downstream techniques for low-cost fuel production. These low-cost techniques consume carbon dioxide from industrial sources, do not use farmland or food crops, and provide fresh water.

Their biofuel technology uses sunlight, algae, non-arable land and carbon dioxide to produce ethanol and the leftover spent algae that can be converted into other biofuels. The technology uses blue-green algae (or cyanobacteria) to change CO2 and seawater into sugars and then into ethanol and biomass. The process is the only one that can convert more than 85% of its CO2 into the four fuels.