(138b) Revolutionizing the Production of Transportation Fuels and Chemicals

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 surpasses biomass-derived fuels, channeling the sun's energy into a new, industry-changing category of direct solar fuels. The company's Helioculture™ platform incorporates proprietary, engineered photosynthetic microorganisms to directly produce infrastructure-ready diesel, ethanol and multiple chemicals with no dependence on biomass feedstocks, agricultural land or fresh water. In parallel, Joule has developed a novel SolarConverter® system to enable the direct, continuous process with productivities greater than biomass-dependent methods, which require numerous energy-intensive steps and downstream processing to achieve an end product. In contrast, using sunlight, non-potable water and waste CO2 from industrial emitters or pipelines, Joule ultimately targets productivities of up to 15,000 gallons of diesel and 25,000 gallons of ethanol per acre annually, at stable costs as low as $50/bble and $1.28/gallon respectively (without subsidies).