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Algae Production

I Corporation is currently involved with research and development of algae production technologies.

Many species of algae have the potential to produce yields over ten times the mass per unit area of other agricultural crops, making them prime candidates as alternative resources for foods, energy, and thousands of potential products. With so much potential, a person might wonder, "What's standing in the way, and why aren't people growing more of this stuff?" If you ask enough people, you'll get enough answers to make your head spin, so to simplify, it's not a conspiracy, it's simply economics.

Algae is so sensitive to environmental changes, that it is very difficult to achieve its full productivity potential on a large scale, without carefully controlling the environment. Controlling the environment in which algae is growing has been a very expensive endeavor and has made it very difficult for algae to compete with traditional agricultural crops. I Corporation is now developing growing systems that will make algae cost competitive with other crops.

All crops require nutrients and energy to grow. We understand that it's more than good for our planet to make efficient use and re-use of these increasingly expensive resources -- it's good economics, and a basic principle of our designs.

Harvesting and dewatering has been aother major cost associated with farming algae. I Corporation is adressing these challenges also, with technologies related to both production and processing of algae.

Algae Processing

Algae products are the new gold rush! For certain there are billions to be made in this rapidly evolving industry. The trick with algae though is not just in getting your hands on it, but rather what to do with the stuff once you've got it! Perhaps the greatest challeng facing the industry is indeed how to economically process algae into the products we want.

Macroalgae, and some larger microalgae has been used for centuries as a source of food. Derivatives of these types of algae have found their way into many of the foods, nutritional supplements, and products we consume regularly. Larger species are much easier to harvest simply because its easier to separate from the water.

The real excitement though is focused around the microalgae species for two main reason: 1. Many microalgae species have a high oil content. 2. many micro algae have astonishingly high growth rates.

Algae has the potential to replace the fossil fuel component of many common products, as well as become an ingredient of many new products and new product formulations from food to building materials and many industrial chemicals.

There is no longer any question that algae can be turned into earth friendly renewable fuels. The question now is, "How do we do it affordably?" The challenges the industry is trying to overcome to produce renewable fuels such as biodiesel are: 1. Efficiently and affordably extracting the algae from the water. 2. Eficiently and affordably drying the algae. 3. Efficiently and affordably extracting the oil from the algae. 4. Processing the oil into fuel efficiently and affordably. 5. Figuring out what to do with what's left over.

I Corporation's focus is on processing methods that bypass many of these energy intensive steps, and result in more direct paths for turning algae into high value products of many different kinds.