Inventure Chemical, Seambiotic in algae biofuel venture

Seattle, Wash.-based Inventure Chemical announced today that it entered into a joint venture agreement with Tel Aviv, Israel's Seambiotic to build a pilot algae biofuel plant.

The two companies plant to construct the pilot commercial biofuel plant in Israel, using algae created from carbon dioxide emissions as feedstock.

The financial terms of the joint venture and the cost of the pilot plant were not disclosed.

"This is a milestone for Inventure, and for the next generation of biofuels," said Mark Tegen, CEO and co-founder of Inventure.

"Seambiotic has been extremely successful in its algae-based CO2 sequestering project with Israeli Electric Corp., which proves the viability of their model. Combining their algae production technology with our algae to biofuel conversion process will close the loop."

Inventure said the new plant would utilize the high-yield oil-rich algae strains that Seambiotic has developed and grown in its open pond system coupled with Inventure's conversion processes to produce ethanol, biodiesel and other value-added chemicals.

"Our joint venture with Inventure will illustrate not only the technological capabilities of our combined processes, but also the validity of the CO2 to algae to biofuel model as a means for coal-fired power generators to meet CO2 reduction mandates," said Amnon Bechar, CEO of Seambiotic.

Inventure did not announce when the pilot plant is expected to be complete.

Last year, Inventure raised just under $2 million in its first round of funding (see Let them eat algae).

Investors included Cedar Grove Investments, Brighton Jones Wealth Management and undisclosed angel investors.

Inventure said it's in the final stages of closing its second round of private financing.