Announcements

Research lab at California State University Long Beach collaborated on methodology

Los Angeles, CA October 26, 2009 – OriginOil, Inc. (OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to transform algae, the most promising source of renewable oil, into a true competitor to petroleum, today announced that Single Step Extraction™, OriginOil’s low energy process to extract oil from algae, has reached the highest industry standards for oil extraction efficiency.

In a long-running collaboration with an advanced research lab at California State University, Long Beach, OriginOil has optimized its Single Step Extraction process to reach the highest industry level for algae oil extraction. The typical efficiency for oil extraction is 94-97%.

OriginOil’s recent breakthrough can extract up to 97% of the oil from algae cells. “This level of efficiency is astonishing for a process that requires less than a tenth of the energy of conventional processes, and without needing chemicals,” said Riggs Eckelberry, OriginOil’s CEO. “I congratulate our lead researcher, Dr. Dheeban Kannan, and the team at Cal-State Long Beach IIRMES for their achievement and very hard work.”

“We have been working with OriginOil of Los Angeles for the past several months developing a method for lipid determination and we now feel that we have a very reliable method," said Richard Gossett, Director of the Institute for Integrated Research in Materials, Environments and Societies (IIRMES), an advanced research and analytical laboratory at California State University, Long Beach. "Using this method, we have tested OriginOil’s Single-Step Extraction process with excellent results. With the optimization of this procedure, we look forward to welcoming other algae companies to use our laboratory.”

A time-lapse video of OriginOil’s Single Step Process is available at www.originoil.com, beginning with a batch of algae that has just gone through the process. In less than an hour, the oil, water and biomass separate by gravity alone. Unlike conventional systems, no chemicals or heavy machinery are used in this single-step process, and no initial dewatering is required.

OriginOil chief scientist Dr Vikram Pattarkine said, “With the performance efficiency of our process now validated, we can proceed with system level optimizations and pilot scale development with our commercial partners.”

Harvesting algae is a challenge. Algae grows suspended in large volumes of water. Once ready for harvest, the algae culture must be concentrated and the oil extracted from each cell. Then, the oil, water and biomass must all be separated for processing. OriginOil’s Single Step Extraction achieves all these steps in one pass. In the process, the company’s Quantum Fracturing™ technology combines with electromagnetic pulses and pH modification to break down cell walls, thereby releasing the oil within these cells. Algae oil rises to the top for skimming and refining, while the remaining biomass settles to the bottom for further processing as fuel and other valuable products.