Joule says that their solar technology design can produce biofuels for less than their competitors.
Katie Fehrenbacher -
EARTH2TECH - April 27, 2010
Is this for real... or just another pinnacle of hype? --Ed.
Joule — the folks behind the unusual hybrid solar-biofuel technology that officially launched last year — have raised a second round of funding of $30 million. Joule’s technology takes a solar concentrating converter filled with brackish water, nutrients and a “highly engineered synthetic organism,” and concentrates sunlight onto the mixture to produce a bio-based fuel. The so-called HelioCulture device can produce ethanol or a hydrocarbon-based fuel that the company’s calling a “SolarFuel.”
Based in Cambridge, Mass., and founded in 2007, Joule was originally backed by Flagship Ventures, which put in “substantially less than $50 million,” Joule CEO Bill Sims cryptically told me last year. This morning Joule says that undisclosed institutional investors joined Flagship Ventures in the series B round.
Joule reiterated its planned timeline in today’s announcement: The company hopes to start producing its renewable diesel fuel at “high-capacity” starting in 2012. Sims told me last year that he was hoping Joule would build a commercial-scale plant “in either...
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