Why Joule?
Many technological alternatives to petroleum-based fuels have been explored, and with good reason. Limited energy supplies, pricing volatility and environmental concerns have converged to create one of the greatest challenges of our time. Joule has an answer that we believe surpasses biomass-derived fuels, channeling the sun's energy into a new, industry-changing category of direct solar fuels.
Biotechnology Breakthroughs
Joule is applying advanced genome engineering to develop a library of proprietary organisms, each one optimized for productivity according to the desired end product. Because the organisms are engineered to directly synthesize and secrete fuels, we will avoid costly steps such as large-scale biomass production and collection or other downstream refinement. Our technology has already been proven with the direct conversion of CO2 to liquid hydrocarbons and ethanol, avoiding the economic and environmental burden of multi-step, petroleum- or biomass-dependent methods.
Unique Closed System Approach
Joule incorporates process, materials, photonic and thermal engineering to make our Helioculture™ platform commercial-ready. Unlike any other closed system approach, our modular SolarConverter™ system is designed for direct fuel production in a single-step, continuous process. It achieves high net energy gains while managing the photon capture, CO2 delivery and mixing, thermal management, product synthesis and initial separation in an efficient, direct-to-end-product™ process, minimizing the steps to market. The system's interconnected assemblies are designed for ease of installation, making it scalable and customizable to any desired output levels based on land and CO2 availability.
Multi-Product Capability
Joule's unique combination of genome and process engineering has enabled a technology platform that is capable of making multiple end products, including liquid hydrocarbons that are fungible with existing diesel fuel and can also be refined to make renewable jet fuel and gasoline. Our products will include ultra clean diesel, ethanol and commodity chemicals, directly targeting multi-billion dollar opportunities in the oil, chemical, consumer and agricultural industries.
Ecologically-Smart Method
Joule's production process avoids the depletion of precious natural resources, with no dependency on agricultural land, crops or fresh water. At the same time, an independently-conducted lifecycle analysis shows that, through our intake of waste CO2, we have the potential to reduce harmful carbon emissions on a large scale – up to 90% in some instances.
Unlimited Scale and Supply
Joule efficiently captures sunlight to produce energy in liquid form, enabling tremendous scale, storage and transport of energy without the power degradation that limits storage of electricity. This advantage, combined with our direct, continuous process and use of waste CO2 as a sole feedstock, creates the potential to deliver virtually unlimited quantities of fuel. We currently target commercial delivery of up to 15,000 gallons of diesel and 25,000 gallons of ethanol per acre per year at full-scale production. Furthermore, the modular design of our SolarConverter system makes it readily extensible from smaller industrial operations to large-scale commerical plants, minimizing scale-up risks.
Highly-Efficient Production
Avoiding the use of raw material feedstocks dramatically simplifies Joule's production process, while also removing a costly component that can be subject to significant fluctuations in price and availability. In addition, our process has the capability of achieving up to 50X the efficiencies of biofuel production, with a fraction of the land use.
Highly-Competitive Costs
The efficienices of Joule's production system, which requires fewer resources and less processing than both petroleum- and biomass-derived fuels, will allow Joule to meet or beat the costs of fossil fuels. We expect to deliver diesel for as little as $30 per barrel equivalent.
Intellectual Property
Three years into development, Joule has achieved a number of technical milestones related to our genome engineering toolkit, organisms, processes and systems. As a result we've developed a broad-based multifaceted IP estate covering core technologies and products.
Proven Leadership
Joule's management team has a successful track record of bringing new technologies to market and creating significant shareholder value in IP-centric, multi-business unit models. Our Scientific Advisory Board, which includes renowned molecular geneticist George Church, contributes wide-ranging expertise in photosynthesis, systems and synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, photonics, materials science, chemcial and process engineering.