Biofuels innovator forms division in Charleston

Charleston Regional Business Journal
Andy Owens
August 5, 2009

Opposition to coal-fired power plants in the South has spurred a producer of microalgae-based renewable energy and industrial products to create a division based in Charleston.

Barry Toyonaga, chief business officer for San Diego-based Kent BioEnergy Corp., said the S.C. division will focus on using the company’s microalgae-based technologies to capture and use carbon dioxide from the flue gas generated by power plants.

Toyonaga said entrepreneur Grant Knox noticed that utility companies that were trying to meet demand with coal-fired power plants were being challenged on existing and proposed operations.

“He approached KBE several months ago, making inquiries about the possibility of licensing our technology to provide the region’s power plant operators with algae-based industrial solutions to control CO2 emissions,” Toyonaga said.

The company appointed Grant to head the two-person operation in Charleston. Toyonaga said Kent BioEnergy plans to expand further depending on financing for one or more projects Grant is developing.

“South Carolina has a development strategy to build several new power plants and is heavily dependent on coal” said Grant, managing director of the S.C. division. “Our approach offers solutions to the anticipated air quality permitting opposition and carbon emissions.”

Kent BioEnergy has been growing and harvesting algae at its 160-acre facility in southern California for more than 15 years, Toyonaga said. The company’s initial use of algae was for cleaning water used in aquaculture businesses. The company was the nation’s largest producer of striped bass two years ago. That grew into a biofuel business.

“Most interestingly, KBE has developed strategies which not only prevent the unwanted release of CO2 into the air but take advantage of the algae’s ability to process the CO2 into more complex, valuable chemical compounds which can be used in place of petroleum crude,” Toyonaga said.

The company said it holds worldwide exclusive rights to Clemson University’s patented technologies for the harvesting and conversion of microalgae biomass to biolipids. Grant said the company has a longtime working relationship with agricultural and biological engineering professor David Brune at Clemson.

Toyonaga said that Grant was the main reason for Kent BioEnergy’s move to South Carolina but that the region’s coal dependence, an apparent need to mitigate power plant byproducts and the company’s ties to Clemson made it obvious Kent needed to do something in the state.

“There is no single reason, but rather a timely accumulation of related matters,” he said.

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