OriginOil, INL ink pact for algae-to-renewable crude R&D effort

In California, the DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory has teamed with OriginOil to co-develop an integrated system for direct conversion of raw algae into a renewable crude oil that can be used by existing petroleum refineries. OriginOil’s planned Biocrude System™ will integrate its own harvesting system with state-of-the-art biomass processing technology being developed under the recently-announced research agreement with INL, to convert raw algae into barrels of renewable crude oil.

This much cleaner replacement for conventional petroleum will be designed to be compatible with conventional petroleum refineries. Renewable algae crude could also be blended with other biomass sources to improve their performance.