Popular Science Honors OriginOil With “Best Of What’s New 2012” Award in the Green category

High-speed Algae Appliance helps enable clean energy production

Los Angeles, California – November 14, 2012 – OriginOil, Inc. (OTC/BB: OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough energy production process for harvesting algae and cleaning up oil and gas water, announced today that its high-speed algae harvester, the Algae Appliance™, has been awarded Popular Science magazine’s 2012 Best of What’s New Award in the Green category.

“For 25 years, Popular Science has honored the innovations that surprise and amaze us − those that make a positive impact on our world today and challenge our view of what’s possible in the future,” said Jacob Ward, Editor-in-Chief of Popular Science. “The Best of What’s New Award is the magazine’s top honor, and the 100 winners − chosen from among thousands of entrants − each a revolution in its field.”

“Because algae lives in all that water and is so perishable, the algae industry needs a breakthrough harvesting technology to make it in the huge global energy and chemicals markets,” said Riggs Eckelberry, OriginOil CEO. “We thank Popular Science for recognizing that our proprietary, patent-pending Model 4 Algae Appliance could be that breakthrough.”

Each year, Popular Science reviews thousands of new products and innovations to choose the top 100 technologies across 12 categories. Winners are featured in the magazine’s annual “Best of What’s New” issue, one of Popular Science’s bestselling issues of the year, on newsstands today. According to the award website, “What are the qualities that earn a product a Best of What’s New award? Innovation and execution. Products that transform their category, that solve an unsolvable problem, that incorporate entirely new ideas and functions. We’re looking for ideas that are revolutionary, not evolutionary.”