BERKELEY (Commodity Online): Bio Architecture Lab, US (BAL) and its Chilean subsidiaries BALChile and BALBiofuels Chile to have experimental pilot facility to further develop its technology that creates low cost and renewable advanced biofuels from sustainably grown native seaweed, Macrocystis pyrifera.
The facility is expected to be operational in 2012 and will allow the company to demonstrate a complete value chain from feedstock cultivation (seaweed farming) to advanced biofuel production in the Los Lagos region of Chile.
The company is building on the country's long history with the aquaculture industry to create new sources of fuels and chemicals that don't compete with land and freshwater for food production, reduce CO2 emissions and are environmentally beneficial to the oceans.
Through its core competency in synthetic biology, BAL has engineered a technology platform that is capable of metabolizing the sugars in seaweed to deliver fermentable sugars more competitive with conventional sugar sources.
BAL has already produced ethanol and isobutanol from seaweed. It is considered as an ideal feedstock for commercial scale biofuels and chemicals production because it has up to 60 percent fermentable carbohydrate as it has no lignin and it does not require arable land use or freshwater to grow, and it reduces marine pollution.
The experimental pilot facility will host milling equipment, fermenters, and bioreactors, and will allow BAL to take its technology to the next level of scale. Within the next 48 months, BAL intends to scale-up to a larger facility creating jobs and producing commercial quantities of biofuels and biochemicals.
