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One of the more interesting aspects of Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation’s deal with CRI Catalyst Company of the USA, is having bargaining chips or cards in your hand.

Last September Marlborough-based Aquaflow announced a partnership of its wild-algae biofuel generating technology project with Texas’ CRI.

The wild algae has a dual ability to clean water and produce a ‘green crude’ (like black but without the millions of years of heat and pressure). CRI has a catalyst and process to convert this green crude into hydrocarbon fuels and blend stocks in typically a few hours.

CRI calls this proprietary technology Integrated Hydropyrolysis and Hydroconversion (IH2) – which can also convert biomass directly into renewable gasoline, jetfuel and diesel. CRI is also a subsidiary of Shell Oil (who recently sold its NZ downstream assets from refining to retail to Z Energy).

Whether or not Aquaflow’s promotion and use of wild algae (localised to the region) will be the route to market for what is plethora of global algae-to-oil projects, is still to be determined. (See here for a small list of such projects).

Aquaflow director Nick Gerritsen says using algae that naturally exist in an area is much more cost-effective and water-cleansing that attempting to create mono-cultures of algae specifically for its lipid oil production.

There’s also the question of whether a globally scalable algae focused solution will be deemed riskier if genetically modified species are used.