Biofuel firm lands US deal
Nelson-based Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation plans multi million dollar demonstration plant.
Wednesday, August 24 2011 || Progress report || BY Bill Moore, Businessday.co.nz
Its agreement is with CRI Catalyst Company, a provider of catalyst and process technology to the global renewable fuel market.
Aquaflow says it has an unique capability to produce fuels from algae and other sources such as timber. CRI has global sub-licensing rights for integrated hydropyrolysis and hydroconversion (IH2) technology, which, Aquaflow says, cost-effectively converts biomass into renewable gasoline, jet and diesel hydrocarbon blendstocks. It said the parties would test and evaluate projects, bringing together their capabilities.
Their initial efforts would focus on setting up a demonstration plant, most likely in the United States, and then "expand into the project opportunities currently in the Aquaflow pipeline".
Aquaflow has already received US Department of Energy funding for development work.
Aquaflow chief technical officer Paul Dorrington said the company, which has so far been privately funded, had spent "in the low millions" on developing its technology.
"It would be in the hundreds of millions for a full-scale plant. That's our next challenge."
He said a commercially viable plant would need about 1000 tonnes of biofuel a day, producing about one barrel of biofuel per tonne of feedstock.
The initial goal was to build a pilot plant using about 100 tonnes a day to "prove the economics and all these sorts of things".
"There's a strategic benefit in doing one in the States with them, but we're also trying to push forward with a Nelson development as well."
The plants would produce fuel "very similar" to conventional diesel, petroleum and jet fuel.
"At the point it comes out of this plant, it still needs to go through a distillation stage, but, essentially, the material that comes out will look like what you would expect diesel to look like. It just needs to be separated into the fractions, that's all."
Aquaflow, which has six staff at its Wakatu Industrial Estate site, was set up six years ago by Nelson-based entrepreneur Barrie Leay, Nick Gerritsen and Vicki Buck, initially to develop biofuels from sewage pond algae.
Dorrington said it could now produce the fuels from "any biomass as feedstock – algae, wood, agricultural wastes and a whole range of different things".
There was sufficient feedstock to build a viable plant in Nelson, he said, and the company was "talking to the forestry guys here". He said there was a move to publicly list the company in New Zealand "fairly shortly". "Then, obviously, to get into the real money we've got to move into the American market," he said.
