In Massachusetts, the secretive Joule Unlimited (then known as Joule Biotechnologies) emerged late last year from “stealth mode” with the startling announcement that their technology could produce up to 15,000 gallons per acre (per year) of drop-in hydrocarbon fuels, using only sunlight, CO2 and (fresh, brackish or saline) water as inputs. The Solar Converter – including radical new micro-organism and a technology known as helioculture – is the heart of Joule’s IP.
Did it the announcement change everything? No. Will it change the biofuels competitive landscape? It already has, and conceptually contains those Four Horsemen of a Market Apocalyse that VC so dearly love: disruptive, scalable, competitive, protected technology.
Here was our early report on Joule
As outlined, the related technologies simultaneously solved the resource challenge known to some as “food vs fuel” (and to others as “soaring feedstock prices”), the infrastructure and product adoption challenges of ethanol and biodiesel, and had the kind of productivity that marked it for early commercialization. Joule fuel was reputed by its backers to be competitive with $30 oil.
But does it work?
The reaction
After the astonishment subsided, some criticism emerged from the biofuels community. What exactly was the organism? Hadn’t previous attempts to engineer a magic bug along Joule-like lines all failed? Where would all the CO2 come from? Would the company raise any real money? And why, carped some, is their so much fuss over, basically, a press release – that is, an undisclosed microorganism being operated at bench scale?
Joule: a year after
Almost a year has passed, and Joule has constructed and is now operating a pilot plant in Leander, Texas; they say they have demonstrated proof of concept on 10 renewable chemicals back in the lab they describe as “blendstock for end products”. The company changed its name to Joule Unlimited, and has placed itself on a path towards what it terms initial phase 1 commercialization in late 2011, which will start with a demonstration and then add, utilizing the solar-like modularity of the company’s technology to rapidly scale.
There still hasn’t been a whole heck of a lot parsed out in the media about Joule’s magic bug, and even less analysis of the overall Joule system. So the Digest spent some time with Joule CEO Bill Sims last week, and on the heels of our “Solar Biofuels” review from last Friday, here is what we have learned about Joule.
The disclosure or lack thereof regarding Joule’s magic bug
“We definitely want to communicate our thinking about disclosure,” Sims relates. “It is obvious we have engineered a phototroph to produce hydrocarbons. One way of thinking is that, by disclosing, we are simply enabling competition.”
Uh, what exactly is a phototrophe?
An organism that creates energy from sunlight, CO2 and inorganic materials – traditionally through photosynthesis – like plants, algae and certain photosynthetic bacteria. The other type of organism – like humans, for example, can create energy only by consuming other organic material (plants, animals, etc etc). These are called heterotrophes.
Back to Joule
“But it is more than that,” Sims contends, It is Important not to focus on that piece – the platform organism to accomplish the task, or many organisms. the organism alone doesn’t get the job done. It’s the systematic approach:
- Solar Converter
- Bioprocessing
- Downstream systems that pull together the whole.
“The Solar Converter is a device unlike any ever developed. It provides water to the organism, captures CO2 and photons, managing therms, mixing the solution, product separation – water transfer and final separation facility in a continuous process extinguishing all photons.
“We want to disclose [the microorganism] in context of the overall process. Some time relatively soon, what we’re doing will become clear.”
What does it produce? Hydrocarbon fuels, for one, a/k/a “drop-in fuels”. But also — and initially, ethanol. It even has the capability to produce biodiesel. Plus the aforementioned renewable chemicals, which would be pursued in partnership with chemicals producers as the markets develop.
Joule vs competing technologies
“We’re at the vanguard of a new approach,” Sims said, referring to the class of technologies moving forward – most still at lab or concept stage – that do not utilize biomass as an intermediate for the production of renewable fuels, such as corn, sugar or algae. “Using a biomass intermediate, well the solutions that are out there perhaps a handful of companies might be successful with. But they are an alternative to petroleum-based fuels. We are a replacement.”
Schematic comparison between algal biomass and direct photosynthetic processes. The direct process, developed by Joule and called Helioculture™, combines an engineered cyanobacterial organism supplemented with a product pathway and secretion system to produce and secrete a fungible alkane diesel product continuously in a SolarConverter™ designed to efficiently and economically collect and convert photonic energy. The process is closed and uses industrial waste CO2 at concentrations 50–100× higher than atmospheric. The organism is further engineered to provide a switchable control between carbon partitioning for biomass or product. The algal process is based on growth of an oil-producing culture in an industrial pond on atmospheric CO2, biomass harvesting, oil extraction, and chemical esterification to produce a biodiesel ester
Is Joule’s fuel a biofuel at all?
Depends on how you define it. According to Sims, no. That’s because they do not utilize a biomass intermediate – processing fuel, for example, from algae or corn. Or even feeding sugar to a magic bug which produces a hydrocarbon molecule.
But in using a bio-based organism as the base for synthesizing fuels from sunlight, CO2 and water, Joule is very much making a biofuel. But it is a wholly different type of biofuel. For the photosynthetic properties of the organism are not being used to make biomass — and otherwise serve the energy and life needs of the organism — they are being directed to making fuel.
Jouel calls it a solar fuel. I think for now that the public is not quite ready for that radical a transition in terminology. We see it here in the radically dropped page views when we write about ‘solar liquid fuels’ or “electrofuels”. So, for the time being, we will call it a solar biofuel.
Is Joule’s magic bug a new form of life?
Well, first of all, there’s more than one magic bug. You see, Joule is not working off a magic bug, but a magic idea.
It’s not new life, but its pretty close. Some plant-enhancing strategies, which knock out or overexpress certain genes to enhance, shut down, or insert some new property into an organism. Joule does all that, too. But wait, as the Ginsu knife people would say, there’s more.
“Commencing with e.coli, they have used that well-studied bacteria as a base for layering on a series of genetic-based skills - a skill for fixing carbon dioxide, a skill for grabbing water molecules, a skill for fixing photons – and a skill for converting those inputs – in a series of chemical transformations known as a metabolic pathway – into a hydrocarbon which can be used as a fuel. All while using e.coli’s system for preserving its own life and regulating its own systems.
It’s a little like a cell phone, in the end, pardon the pun. A cell phone sits on top of the human genome, taking advantage of human skills (the opposable thumb to hold it, the fingers to peck out keys, the intelligence to manipulate and understand, and the eyes to read outputs), but conferring a whole new range of skills and opportunities to the original organism.
But go a little further. Think of an embedded device – for example, an artificial limb. That not only confers new skills in the manner of the 6 Million Dollar Man (or replaces them), but is integrated with the existing system. That’s even more like what Joule’s magic bug is all about. Key thought: new tricks for an old, old dog like e.coli.
Of course, that’s the layman’s description. The synthetic biologist would describe it as a conferring photoautotrophic properties on a heterotrophic organism.
Note: If the technical description doesn’t make you run for the hills, we have some more detailed discussion of Joule’s magic bug as an appendix to this article.
Is it solar, or is it bio?
Bio, for sure, but with some attributes of solar. First, it converts energy directly from the sun, not unlike solar systems – but unlike traditional biofuels or wind energy, which use an intermediate. It has some other more interesting attributes of solar – namely, modularity and scale of the Joule solar converter. You add it on, in many ways like a series of solar panels. Only, unlike solar, it does not only consume sunlight, it consumes CO2 and water.
Oh, no, we’ll run out of fresh water
Glad you asked. No we won’t. Joule’s system is comfortable with fresh, brackish or saline water.
Oh no, we’ll run out of CO2
According to climate scientists, not a big problem. Joule’s technology misses out on a Nirvana of biotechnology – the design of a system that can achieve high productivity based on ambient CO2 from the atmosphere. But it draws on waste CO2 – from cement plants, coal-fired power, ethanol facilities, for example. Any emitter who is looking to convert a problem into a monetary opportunity.
OK, is this a carbon conversion story?
“We’re not a carbon conversion story,” says Sims. “We’re a fuels and chemicals company. There is plenty of volume of waste CO2, but we’re not saving the world from CO2. But there are a lot of locations – in particular, we’ve seen a large land availability, as we’ve done our homework. We can’t say there’s not a challenge – for example, water availability. But desert areas may have brackish or saline aquifers.
Scaling and funding
We have a clear differentiator, Sims adds. “We can show at small scale what’s feasible at large scale, from day 1. We don’t need a large scale facility – no gigantic proof of concept – because of the modularity of the design.” Funding? “There is plenty of funding for great IRR.”
We talked about the recent surge in IPO activity in the sector. Is Joule seeing the same rise in interest?
“We’re seeing far more interest from investors. A year ago we announced, and did our own outreach to large handful of institutions – at that time, more of a high level overview, including banks and the like. Very few banks would talk about liquid energy. In 12 months, that has changed, and there are countless companies circling around, wanting to be on the radar. With other institutions, there is absolutely more activity. They’ve gotten over the wounds from corn ethanol. It’s like: “that’s over”. These guys read the paper, too, and they see the demand coming from airlines and the military. They understand that the failure of the initial approaches is not a reason to stay out of a market. The technology improved, it took people some time to get over what happened, but now there’s a demand.”
The economics
Aside from some limited public guidance, along the lines of “competitive with $30 oil,” we don’t have much to go on. We do know that sunlight is free, brackish water abundant at virtually no cost, and with waste CO2 the competition is in many cases carbon capture and storage systems which cost $40 per ton and up. So the feedstock costs are minimal, although there may be some nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus and other micro-nutrient costs in there – that’s not entirely clear based on the limited disclosures. But those are fairly minimal on a per-gallon basis in competing micro-organism systems.
What we are left with is land, and the capital costs for construction of the slar converters, plus maintenance. We’ll have to see the engineering to know more, but with Joule raising $30 million this spring with investors who would have seen the detailed costs, there’s little doubt that their pro-forms are solid if the productivity they aim for can be sustainably achieved.
Joule’s progress – what’s is understood and misunderstood?
“We know we haven’t said much,” Sims says. “And that some people believe we are using processes that have been proven not to work. In terms of those processes, we’ve taken to heart the NREL data and research from other people in the field. and we agree with it. We took a different approach.
“We also heard the same 100,000 gallons per acre as everyone else, and we understand why people say what they say about 15,000 gallons per acre. But we already at 10,000 gallons per acre per year with ethanol and that is 4 times what biomass can achieve using the old approaches.
“We haven’t said we’ve done it, its all over. We have only stated what is possible and hired the best to achieve our goals. And we have an unbeatable team, and an outstanding science advisory board.”
COMMENTARY: I profiled Joule Unlimited back in July 2009 when it was named Joule Biotechnologies, and it claimed that it was growing genetically engineered microorganisms in specially designed photobioreactors. The microorganisms used energy from the sun to convert carbon dioxide and water into ethanol or hydrocarbon fuels (such as diesel or components of gasoline). The organisms excrete the fuel, which can then be collected using conventional chemical-separation technologies.
It was very difficult for many green technology and biofuels experts to believe Joule's claims, because there was nothing to show. We now know more about their solar biofuels technology, but this still leaves a lot of unanswered questions:
- Does Joule hold patents or trade secrets for the genetically engineered organisms used in their biofuels production process?
- What kind of chemical by-products does their solar converter produce?
- Can those chemical by-products be recycled into usable products?
- They claim they have conquered proof-of-concept, but do they have a working prototype of their solar biofuels producing technology in place?
- How long does it take to produce 15,000 gallons of biofuels per acre?
- How quickly can they scale-up production of biofuels?
- Provided capital is not an issue, how much biofuels can they produce per year?
It is definitely going to be interesting to watch future events as they unfold. It took fuel cell producer
Courtesy of an article dated August 23, 2010 appearing in Biofuels Digest and an article dated July 27, 2009 appearing in Technology Review
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