innovation ‘Growing a flask of algae in a laboratory is one thing, growing an acre of algae in photobioreactors in a closed-loop system is a whole different animal.’ the weight as a lipid.” They asked what a lipid was and when I said ‘oil,’ all hell broke loose.” That was about 1½ years ago when the biodiesel industry was prominent in the news. Six months later, Valcent teamed with Global Green Solutions and broke ground on the Vertigro test facility in El Paso. Global Green became the operating and engineering partner while Kertz and Valcent were the research and development team. “Global Green Solutions is another small, publicly traded company that has the expertise to build out [the Vertigro system] large scale,” Kertz said.
Sophisticated Resources
PHOTO: JERRY W. KRAM, BBI INTERNATIONAL
Kertz founded Valcent about three years ago and soon took the company public. The company successfully launched a skin
care product called the Nova System. That success attracted investors and in turn allowed Kertz to pursue a dream of his: large-scale algae production. “[The investors] got behind me when I told them what I wanted to do out here,” he said, gesturing toward the greenhouse. “We’ve been very well funded to do this project, obviously.” Kertz was able to build his pilot project with a fully equipped, advanced microbiological laboratory. Inside the ordinary-looking steel building is equipment that wouldn’t be out of place at a leading research university, said Kertz pointing to the granite-topped microscopy table, which has steel legs that are driven six feet into the earth to prevent vibrations. Stability is important for the micromanipulators that can pull a single cell off a slide for isolation and culturing. There is also a robotic culture chamber that can test strains of algae in hundreds of different environments in a matter of days to design the optimum conditions for biomass or lipid production. Kertz went out and found the best people he could to create and carry out his vision. “For any growing company the top thing is to find a good crew,” he said. “I’ve been blessed with a tremen-
Kertz demonstrates the microscopy station in the state-of-the-art lab he created to discover and analyze varieties of algae for biomass production.
34 BIOMASS MAGAZINE 12|2007