Seattle biotech turning pond scum into fuel

A Seattle bio-technology company has new investors and thinks it has a leg up on a process to create fuel out of simple, blue-green algae.

For years, corn and soy have been used to blend bio-fuels for gasoline and jet fuel. Seattle’s Matrix Genetics is using a similar concept, hoping to generate fuels through the growth of cyanobacteria, or algae.

Biologist and CEO Margaret McCormick says when you think about it, the oil we drill and refine today started the same way, as prehistoric algae turned into petroleum over millions of years. “What we’re doing is using technology to speed up the process.”

Matrix Genetics is growing algae cultures in incubators at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle.

Developing fuel from algae has obvious advantages over using corn or other plant-based products. For one, algae doesn’t compete with the food supply. It also doesn’t necessarily require clean water, just a lot of sunlight.

Ultimately, algae would be mass produced, just like corn. “But the projected productivity is much higher, so from a typical soy or other type of feed stock, you’re talking 50 to 100 gallons per acre where something like algae, the projections are closer to 6,000 gallons per acre,” said McCormick.

In New Mexico, Sapphire Energy this week opened an algae production plant, consisting of cultivation ponds and processing areas that it expects will produce up to 100 barrels per day of what’s called crude algal oil by the end of 2014.

FedEx and Boeing are among the companies with a keen interest in the Matrix Genetics algae project.

“Algae is really interesting and important because it’s so scaleable, has such great sustainability potential but it’s a little way off. There’s some technology to be developed before it reaches price parity,” said Boeing’s Michael Lakeman. Boeing is keeping an eye on several alternative fuel projects calling it “critical” to the future of aviation.

Avista, the Spokane-based energy company has just announced an investment in Matrix Genetics through its venture capital division, a move that allows the biotechnology firm to spin off from its parent company, Targeted Growth, and focus on developing sustainable products out of blue-green algae.

There are many companies attempting to exploit algae for fuel but Matrix Genetics is using biology to manipulate the process, altering the genes to increase the oils the algae produces as it grows. That is, to fatten them up.

McCormick agrees the company is essentially building a better mousetrap. “That’s our position that in the end, biology matters for biological processes and we’ve got state of the art biologies and the best scientists in the world who are pursuing these different strains.”

“We don’t look at the other companies in the algae industry, necessarily, as competitors but they are potential customers for our strains,” said McCormick.

If the scientists at Matrix Genetics are right, algae could be harvested every seven to ten days and the process repeated, doing in just days what takes nature millions of years.