See-O-Two seeing potential from algal biomass tech

Vienna, Austria-based See-O-Two has developed what it says is an industrial scale system to grow and use microalgae to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions and convert it into biomass to produce biofuels and bioplastics.

The company’s CEO Joachim Grill said its proprietary technology, developed in Austria and Germany, grows algae at three-to-six times higher productivity and at about 80 percent of the cost of competing systems. Grill spoke at the Cleantech Group’s Cleantech Forum XXIII in Boston this week as one of the jury-selected startups seeking funding.

He added that the company’s multi-stage growth process of the algae occurs in a closed pond system, which allows for temperature control. A two-acre plant, using the company’s technology, could produce 6,000 tons of algae and consume more than 13,000 tons of carbon dioxide, Grill said.

See-O-Two said it is already running a semi-installation at an undisclosed power company in Austria and recently sold a 20-acre plant to an undisclosed client in the Middle East. It's unclear whether the plant is operational.

“We have achieved market entry,” Grill said.

See-O-Two has raised $2.8 million to date from investors including See Private Equity Fund. See-O-Two brought in $200,000 in revenue in the past year. The company is projecting $14 million in revenue in 2011, mainly from licensing its technology.

The company is currently seeking investments of between $500,000 and $10 million, including co-investments made with blue chip private equity and venture funds to continue to scale its technology, Grill said.

Other companies are taking slightly different tactics, such as BioMara, a Scottish-Irish research project that's looking to produce biofuel from algae (see U.K. algae biofuel co. BioMara launches). The company is investigating the feasibility of using both microscopic, single-celled organisms, which produce oil directly, and seaweeds, which grow quickly and can be harvested for their biomass.

San Francisco-based Solazyme has developed an industrial scale fermentation process capable of producing thousands of gallons of algal oil using standard industrial equipment. Solazyme uses synthetic biology for the renewable bioproduction of fuels, industrial oleochemicals, and health and wellness ingredients from marine microbes (see Solazyme to work with Chevron on algae fuel and Solazyme joins algae elite with additional $45M).

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