Why Joule liquid energy?
Many technological alternatives to petroleum-based fuels have been explored, and with good reason. Limited energy supplies, pricing volatility and environmental concerns have converged to create one of the greatest challenges of our time. Joule has an answer that we believe surpasses biomass-derived fuels, channeling the sun's energy into a new, industry-changing category of direct solar fuels.
Biotechnology Breakthroughs
Joule is applying advanced genome engineering to develop a library of proprietary organisms, each one optimized for productivity according to the desired end product. Because the organisms will synthesize and secrete fuels and chemicals directly, we will avoid costly steps such as fermentation, large-scale biomass collection or other downstream refinement. Our technology has already been proven with the conversion of CO2 to ethanol and hydrocarbons, avoiding the economic and environmental burden of multi-step, biomass-dependent methods.
Integrated Systems Approach
Joule takes a highly-sophisticated systems approach, incorporating process, materials, photonic and thermal engineering to make our Helioculture™ technology platform commercial-ready. Our modular SolarConverter™ system is designed to achieve high net energy gains while managing the photon capture, CO2 delivery and mixing, thermal management, product synthesis and initial separation in an efficient, continuous process – minimizing the steps to market. The system's interconnected assemblies are designed for ease of installation, making it scalable and customizable to any desired output levels based on land and CO2 availability.
Multi-Product Capability
Joule's unique combination of bioscience and systems engineering has enabled a technology platform that's capable of making multiple end products, at highly competitive costs, via the same production process. We have already demonstrated proof of principle on multiple solar fuels and chemicals at lab scale. Pilot operations for ethanol will begin in the first half of 2010, with diesel to follow in early 2011. In addition to the commercialization of solar fuels, we will have the opportunity to cost-effectively bring valuable solar chemicals to market, most likely via industry partnerships.
Ecologically-Smart Method
Joule's Helioculture technology avoids the depletion of precious natural resources, with no dependency on agricultural land, crops or fresh water. At the same time, an independently-conducted lifecycle analysis shows that, through our intake of waste CO2, we have the potential to reduce harmful carbon emissions on a large scale – up to 90% in some instances.
Unlimited Scale and Supply
Joule efficiently captures sunlight to produce energy in liquid form, enabling tremendous scale, storage and transport of energy without the power degradation that limits storage of electricity. This advantage, combined with our continuous production process and use of waste CO2 as a sole feedstock, creates the potential to deliver virtually unlimited quantities of fuel. We currently target commercial delivery of up to 25,000 gallons of ethanol and 15,000 gallons of diesel per acre per year at full-scale production. Furthermore, the modular design of our SolarConverter system makes it readily extensible from smaller industrial operations to large-scale commerical plants, minimizing scale-up risks.
Highly-Efficient Production
Avoiding the use of raw material feedstocks dramatically simplifies Joule's production process, while also removing a costly component that can be subject to significant fluctuations in price and availability. In addition, our process has the capability of achieving up to 10X more efficient land use versus biomass-derived fuels.
Highly-Competitive Pricing
Even the best technology and system will fail without stable production costs and competitive market pricing. The efficienices of Joule's production system, which requires fewer resources and less processing than both petroleum- and biomass-derived fuels, will allow Joule to meet or beat the pricing of existing transporation fuels. We expect to deliver ethanol and diesel at the energy equivalent of as little as $50 and $40 per barrel respectively.
Intellectual Property
More than two years into development, Joule has achieved a number of technical milestones related to our genome engineering toolkit, organisms, processes and systems. As a result we've developed a broad-based multifacted IP estate covering core technologies and products.
Proven Leadership
Joule's management team has a successful track record of bringing new technologies to market and creating significant shareholder value in IP-centric, multi-business unit models. Our Scientific Advisory Board, which includes renowned molecular geneticist George Church, contributes wide-ranging expertise in photosynthesis, systems and synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, photonics, materials science, chemcial and process engineering.