Tech startup of the month.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: Solix

INITIAL LIGHTBULB

Near the end of 2004, serial entrepreneur Jim Sears was pondering an increasingly common problem. "I asked myself, 'What's going to happen as we run out of fuels?'" he said. "It's like this big elephant in the room."

Soon thereafter, he was researching renewable energy on the Internet and happened onto a review of the Aquatic Species Program, a 20-year study of algae as an energy source by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden. The program showed a lot of promise, but ended in 1996 nonetheless.

"I said, 'Wow, that's amazing,'" remembered Sears. "I started to look into it and thought if it was this good--and all the claims were stunning--then why aren't we running around with algae in our tanks, so to speak, right now? I just kept asking the question, 'If this is so good, then why aren't we doing it?'"

Sears found one critical flaw in the NREL work. "It's got to be in done in a closed bioreactor, not an open pond," he said. "They made the assumption that you could never get the price point cheap enough in a closed system. At that time, the price of oil was less than $20 a barrel." With oil prices now more than double what they were when the study concluded, the economics are much different.

After incorporating the company in late 2005, Sears found a partner in Colorado State University and the team later in the year developed several small prototype bioreactors. In 2006, carbon mitigation consultant Doug Henston came on board as CEO; Sears now serves as chief inventor for the 16-employee company.

IN A NUTSHELL

Solix plans to build large-scale bioreactors to harvest triglycerides from fast-growing algae. The bioreactors will measure 300 feet by 50 feet and consist of three layers of plastic in "waterbed-like constructions" and computer-controlled technology to foster the growth of the algae within, Sears said, describing huge swaths of land with "tens of thousands" of the devices.

"The technology is taking concentrated carbon dioxide--which could come in the form of flue gases from a coal-fired power plant or from a brewery--and dissolving it into the water in these bags, circulating the water, adding...