Together, the companies will refine the hydrothermal treatment process developed and operated by Sapphire Energy at pilot scale. In addition, they will jointly license and market the technology into an expanded list of industries, including algae, municipal solid waste and farm waste in order to upgrade other biomass sources into energy.
The agreement spans a minimum of five years through the development of Sapphire Energy's first commercial scale, algae-to-energy production facility.
"Sapphire Energy is very pleased to build upon its already successful strategic partnership with Linde to build a commercial oil upgrading process designed to increase yield and lower the cost of crude oil production," said Cynthia Warner, CEO and chairman of Sapphire Energy.
"Large energy projects like we are building require very significant partnerships to fund the development of new technologies and make available engineering resources needed to bring these projects on line at commercial scale," Warner continued. "We think Linde is a perfect partner to help Sapphire achieve this goal."
Dr. Aldo Belloni, a member of Linde AG's executive board, said his firm has been working with Sapphire Energy for two years to develop a cost-efficient CO2 delivery system for commercial algae production, and he's confident in both Sapphire and the course it is pursuing.
"After the positive experience gained, we decided to intensify our cooperation with Sapphire," Belloni said. "Based upon our profound engineering expertise, we will contribute to further develop and scale up Sapphire's algae-to-crude-oil technology."
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