OriginOil Announces Successful First Phase of Commercial Pilot Program
Pilot Partner MBD Energy Praises OriginOil Team on Expertise and System Operation
Los Angeles, CA December 8, 2010 – 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 the successful completion of the first phase of its commercial pilot program, earning high praise for quality and performance from MBD Energy, OriginOil’s first customer and pilot partner.
“We are very pleased with OriginOil’s flawless demonstration of its CO2 feeding and algae extraction systems to date,” said Andrew Lawson, MBD Energy’s managing director. “We are also impressed with the quality of the engineering and the expertise of the team as algae growers and harvesting specialists.”
“Completing this first phase is a major milestone for us. We are excited to move on to the next stage of our multi-phase commercialization program with our global partner, MBD Energy, culminating in the deployment of OriginOil systems in full-scale power plant operations,” said Riggs Eckelberry, OriginOil CEO.
In a video recorded at MBD’s research site at James Cook University in North Queensland, Australia, Technical Director Larry Sirmans described the-end-to-end harvesting process that his team developed with OriginOil’s technology and support.
“We approached OriginOil with our design concept and it’s turned into quite a bit of a collaborative arrangement,” explained Sirmans. “We’re quite excited, because we’ve pretty much proven a concept that now we’re actually ready to go to a full scale trial.”
Earlier this year, MBD became OriginOil’s first customer for the first of progressively larger systems to serve its three major power station projects in Australia. According to MBD Energy, each of its power station projects has the potential to grow to 80-hectare commercial plants, each capable of producing 11 million liters of oil for plastics and transport fuel. MBD Energy estimates that, subject to performance and joint approvals, the projects have potential at full scale to consume more than half of each power station’s flue-gas emissions.
Recently, OriginOil and MBD entered into a strategic agreement protecting OriginOil’s intellectual property for pilot projects and granting mutual marketing rights.
