Joule Unlimited Technologies Inc. won the Silver in this year's Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Awards for developing a more efficient technique for producing biofuel.


The Cambridge, Mass.-based company has created genetically engineered micro-organisms that secrete ethanol, diesel fuel and other hydrocarbons from water, sunlight and carbon dioxide. The use of these patented organisms eliminates some of the costly processing steps needed to turn plants into motor fuel.

"The technology has the exciting potential to significantly transform the economics of the biofuel industry," says Kenny Tang, founder and chief executive of Oxbridge Weather Capital and an Innovation Awards judge.

Traditional biofuels derived from farm products such as corn and sugar cane have come under fire for using up resources that otherwise could be used for food. So researchers began looking to other materials—plants such as switchgrass or jatropha and micro-organisms such as algae—to produce the next generation of biofuels.

Joule took a different path. It uses genetically modified strains of cyanobacteria, which are water-based organisms that make their food through photosynthesis. The organisms, created by a scientific team led by Joule co-founder Noubar Afeyan, can be tweaked to produce different fuels—one form can produce simple ethanol, while another generates more-complex diesel molecules.

While regular algae has to be harvested and processed to squeeze out hydrocarbons, Joule's cyanobacteria release fuels continuously.

Inside Joule's SolarConverter tanks, micro-organisms secrete fuels Joule Unlimited Technologies

Joule's other innovation is its SolarConverter bioreactor, a system of closed tanks that look like solar panels, where the organisms grow and release their fuels. Designed to maximize the amount of sunlight that reaches each organism, the tanks mix the cyanobacteria colonies with water laced with micronutrients and piped-in carbon dioxide. Liquid fuels are separated from the water and piped to nearby tanks for storage.

Joule says its systems could produce 15,000 gallons of diesel and 25,000 gallons of ethanol a year on an acre of land, for as little as $20 per barrel-equivalent of diesel and 60 cents per gallon of ethanol.

Since 2010, the company has been operating a pilot plant in Leander, Texas, where it is testing ethanol production. It plans to break ground this month on a larger-scale demonstration facility in New Mexico, with a goal of beginning commercial production by late 2012 or early 2013.

"Scalability and efficiency are open questions, but the concept is great," says Darlene J.S. Solomon, chief technology officer at Agilent Technologies Inc. and an Innovation Awards judge.

Mr. Totty is a Wall Street Journal news editor based in San Francisco. He can be reached at