ZeaChem, Inc.

ZeaChem, Inc.

1490 O’Brien Drive
Menlo Park, CA 94025

tel: (650) 543-8120
email: businessdevelopment@zeachem.com
ZeaChem, Inc. is developing a cellulose-based biorefinery platform producing either ethanol or a broad portfolio of other chemicals. ZeaChem’s indirect approach leap frogs the yield, capital and CO2 problems associated with traditional ethanol production practices and other potential cellulosic based ethanol processes. ZeaChem currently operates a pilot plant at its Menlo Park, CA laboratory.

Process Advantages

ZeaChem’s process combines biochemical and thermochemical platforms producing either ethanol or a broad portfolio of other chemicals. Utilizing a naturally occurring acetogen, found for example in termites, ZeaChem’s process fully utilizes all of carbon. Thus, the energy of all fractions of the biomass ends up in the product.

For every bone dry ton (BDT) of biomass, ZeaChem’s process will produce a theoretical maximum of 160 gallons of ethanol. Accounting for yield per acre, this is 3x more than corn based ethanol processes and ~1.5x more than either biological (enzymatic) processes or thermochemical (gasification) processes.

Technology Overview

ZeaChem’s innovative process was designed for high yield. The company is pioneering biorefinery technology using combinations of biochemical and thermochemical processing steps.

The biochemical processing step converts fermentable sugars in the cellulosic biomass into acetate, which is then recovered from the broth as an ester. The thermochemical processing step converts lignin and other non-fermentable materials in the cellulosic biomass into hydrogen. By combining these two streams in a hydrogenolysis reaction, ZeaChem produces ethanol. Unlike other processes, the Zeachem process uses all fractions of the plant – cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin, giving it much higher yield.

Our approach allows both fermentable and non-fermentable fractions of the feedstock to contribute chemical energy to the ethanol product. Other approaches have theoretical restrictions that limit ethanol production to 60-100 gallons per dry ton of biomass. The ZeaChem technology will produce fifty percent more ethanol per ton of feed than the current best-in-class technology. Our higher yield dramatically improves process economics, allowing farmers to get more ethanol out of each acre of biomass crop.

Because the yield is so much higher and because energy integration is tighter, the ZeaChem process is friendlier to the environment. Ethanol produced by corn dry milling in the US has a net energy ratio of under 1.6, meaning that fewer than 1.6 units of renewable energy are produced for each unit of fossil energy used in the production the crops and conversion of the crops into fuel ethanol. In contrast, the ZeaChem technology enables a net energy ratio of 10-12. Such high values fundamentally change the nature of any policy debate on the environmental aspects of ethanol as a liquid transportation fuel.

The biochemical processing step can ferment any fermentable sugar, including simple sugars like those found in sugar cane juice, more complex sugars found in corn starch, and the mixed sugars commonly found in cellulosic hydrolyzates. Any material that isn’t readily fermented, such as lignin, can be processed via thermochemical means to produce hydrogen. The result is that the ZeaChem technology is highly flexibile and can be implemented anywhere in the world.

International Solar Electric Technology, Inc. (ISET)

International Solar Electric Technology, Inc. (ISET)

International Solar Electric Technology, Inc.
20600 Plummer St.
Chatsworth, CA 91311, U.S.A.

Business Hours
Mon-Fri 8:00am-5:00pm Pacific Time

Phone: (818) 882-8687
Fax: (818) 882-8608
Email: info@isetinc.com

About

ISET is a private California Corporation with a wide range of expertise in next generation thin film solar electric products and systems. ISET has carried out extensive R&D work in the area of photovoltaic’s (PV) – the technology for direct conversion of sunlight into electricity. Major research breakthroughs involve development of novel, low-cost manufacturing alternatives for fabrication of “printable” high efficiency solar cells which are unique to the entire solar energy industry.

ISET has developed an ink-based process for manufacturing thin-film CIGS solar cells and modules on both rigid and flexible lightweight substrates. This patented technology offers fundamental improvements over existing solutions for both terrestrial and space power applications. Current development efforts deliver a prospect for commercial application that will produce thin-film PV modules for a cost of less than $1.00/watt.

ISET offers technology transfer, customized PV products, PV system design services for both stand-alone and grid-connected systems and general consulting services relating to PV technologies.

Company Information

International Solar Electric Technology (ISET) was established as a California corporation on March 24, 1985 for the purpose of performing R&D and product development in the field of thin film materials and photovoltaic (solar) cells. During the last 19 years, ISET has carried out extensive R&D work in thin film technologies.

The company was originally established by Dr. Vijay K. Kapur, Dr. Bulent M. Basol and Mr. Eric Tseng with the objective of developing low cost materials and processes for manufacturing PV modules. Since 1985, ISET has received nearly $15 million in funding from federal, state agencies, California State and private corporations. ISET’s Laboratories and Manufacturing facilities are housed in a 23,000 ft² facility at 20600 Plummer St., in Chatsworth, California.

Founding Members

Dr. Vijay K. Kapur, President
He received a Ph.D. degree in Physical Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in 1976 and subsequently received an MBA degree from UCLA in 1992. Prior to starting ISET, Dr. Kapur was Director of Applied Research at ARCO Solar (now Shell Solar) from 1979 -1984 and he worked at Stanford Research Institute (SRI International) from 1976 to 1979. He has more than 30 years of working experience in the PV field.

Business Type	manufacturer, service, design, engineering, consulting
Products	customized modules and PV systems
Technology	thin-film copper-indium-diselenide (CIS) based solar cells and modules (a non vacuum approach), crystalline silicon solar cells, encapsulation line
Services	PV system design, technology evaluation, support & training. Design and fabricate a variety of battery charging applications.
Countries & Regions	International
Market Niche	Lightweight solar cells, rigid and flexible substrates. Technology transfers – introducing PV technologies and products in developing countries; Developing customized PV products to meet customers’ needs. PV modules with output ranging from 0.5 – 20.0 Watts. Modules are designed in a variety of shapes and sizes that satisfy customers’ specifications.

Valcent Products Inc.

Valcent Products Inc,.

Investor Relations
Suite 1010 – 789 West Pender Street
Vancouver, B.C. V6C 1H2
Bob Faris or Steve McGuire or Gerry Jardine

Tel: 1-800-877-1626 or 604-606-7979

E-mail: info@valcent.net

About

Valcent Products Inc. is a U.S. public traded company (VCTPF: OTCBB) with offices in Vancouver, B.C. and El Paso, Texas.

Valcent Products Inc. researches and develops life enhancing industrial, commercial and consumer products and processes that have mass consumer appeal and/or widespread commercial/industrial applications. All Valcent products and processes have patents or patents pending on integral technologies.

Vertigro Energy is a joint venture established with Global Green Solutions Inc. to market world wide Valcent’s patent-pending Vertigro bioreactor technology developed to provide a profitable and viable renewable energy resource and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

High Density Vertical Bioreactor

The Holy Grail in the renewable energy sector has been to create a clean, green process which uses only light, water and air to create fuel. Valcent’s HDVB algae-to-biofuel technology mass produces algae, vegetable oil which is suitable for refining into a cost-effective, non-polluting biodiesel. The algae derived fuel will be an energy efficient replacement for fossil fuels and can be used in any diesel powered vehicle or machinery. In addition, 90% by weight of the algae is captured carbon dioxide, which is “sequestered” by this process and so contributes significantly to the reduction of greenhouse gases. Valcent has commissioned the world’s first commercial-scale bioreactor pilot project at its test facility in El Paso, Texas.

Current data projects high yields of algae biomass, which will be harvested and processed into algal oil for biofuel feedstock and ingredients in food, pharmaceutical, and health and beauty products at a significantly lower cost than comparable oil-producing crops such as palm and soyabean (soybean).

The HDVB technology was developed by Valcent in recognition and response to a huge unsatisfied demand for vegetable oil feedstock by Biodiesel refiners and marketers. Biodiesel, in 2000, was the only alternative fuel in the United States to have successfully completed the Environmental Protection Agency required Tier I and Tier II health effects testing under the Clean Air Act. These tests conclusively demonstrated Biodiesel’s significant reduction of virtually all regulated emissions. A U.S. Department of Energy study has shown that the production and use of Biodiesel, compared to petroleum diesel, resulted in a 78.5% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

Algae, like all plants, require carbon dioxide, water with nutrients and sunlight for growth. The HDVB bioreactor technology is ideal for location adjacent to heavy producers of carbon dioxide such as coal fired power plants, refineries or manufacturing facilities, as the absorption of CO2 by the algae significantly reduces greenhouse gases. These reductions represent value in the form of Certified Emission Reduction credits, so-called carbon credits, in jurisdictions that are signatories to the Kyoto Protocol. Although the carbon credit market is still small, it is growing fast, valued in 2005 at $6.6 Billion in the European Union and projected to increase to $77 Billion if the United States accepts a similar national cap-and-trade program.

Valcent’s HDVB bioreactor system can be deployed on non-arable land, requires very little water due to its closed circuit process, does not incur significant labor costs and does not employ fossil fuel burning equipment, unlike traditional food/biofuel crops, like soy and palm oil. They require large agricultural acreage, huge volumes of water and chemicals, and traditional farm equipment and labor. They are also much less productive than the HDVB process: soybean, palm oil and conventional pond-grown algae typically yield 48 gallons, 635 gallons and 10,000 gallons per acre per year respectively.

Global Research Technologies, LLC

GRT

address
3450 S. Broadmont Dr.
Suite 100
Tucson, AZ 85713

e-mail
info@grestech.com

telephone
(520) 547-0956

fax
(520) 903-0570

About
Global Research Technologies, LLC (GRT) is a research and development company whose mission is the demonstration and commercialization of technologies for the capture of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is acknowledged to be a major greenhouse gas and a major contributor to global warming. Commercial implementation of GRT’s ACCESS™ (Atmospheric Carbon CapturE SystemS) technology will enable active management of global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations irrespective of the source of the emissions.

Global Research Technologies is a privately-owned company which was founded in 2004. It currently occupies a 10,000 sq. ft. facility in Tucson, Arizona with administrative offices, a research laboratory, and a prototype development and demonstration area.

The Team

Allen Wright, President/Chief Executive	awright@grestech.com
Klaus Lackner, VP of Research	klackner@grestech.com
Billy Gridley, Chief Financial Officer	bgridley@grestech.com
Ryuhei Ishikawa, Director of Engineering	rishikawa@grestech.com
George Grimm, Business Development	ggrimm@grestech.com
Betsy Murton-Mendoza, Business Manager	bmendoza@grestech.com

The Story

GRT was founded on the shared vision and unique capabilities of four people: Gary Comer, Allen Wright, Klaus Lackner and Wally Broecker. After sailing through the Northwest Passage in 2001 without being blocked by ice, Gary Comer was convinced that climate change was real. He vowed to take action.

Comer’s experience sparked his relationship with Wally Broecker, the Newberry Professor and a Crafoord Prize climate scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. In 2003, Broecker introduced Comer to Klaus Lackner and Allen Wright. Lackner, a widely recognized world leader in energy technologies, had developed the concept of carbon dioxide air-capture and written papers on carbon sequestration while at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Subsequently, Broecker convinced Lackner to join Columbia University as the Ewing Worzel Professor of Geophysics. Broecker had hired Wright to manage the interface between facilities and researchers at Biosphere 2 when that facility was operated by Columbia. He recognized Wright’s demonstrated ability to turn novel concepts into reality.

GRT was born in 2004, funded by Comer’s generosity and based on the strongly held belief of its founders that climate change solutions can and must be found. In 2007, GRT announced that it had successfully demonstrated that air-capture of carbon dioxide is technically feasible and economically promising. Currently it is refining and expanding its suite of air-capture technologies consistent with its mission.

D1 Oils Plc.

D1 Oils – Growing energy solutions

Jatropha contacts
For all enquiries related to the plant science and planting of jatropha, please contact D1-BP Fuel Crops:www.d1bpfuelcrops.com.

Investor and media contacts
For all investor and media enquiries contact:
Graham Prince
Communications Director
Mob: +44 (0)7973 323840
Tel: +44 (0)20 3043 8732
Email: gprince@d1plc.com

Careers contact
For all careers enquiries contact:
Jose Pottinger
Tel: +44 (0)1642 755580
Email: careers@d1plc.com

About

D1 Oils plc is a biofuels technology company. Their strategy is to develop new energy crops into sustainable commercial fuels. The provide technology and services for the breeding, development, planting and harvesting of new varieties of commercial biofuel crops, focusing on alternative, sustainable feedstocks that are not subject to the same price pressures as food-grade crops. They also have an established plant science and planting program for Jatropha curcas, a robust, tropical oilseed bearing tree. Jatropha produces inedible oil feedstock for biodiesel and is able to make use of land not suitable for arable agriculture.

New Energy Crops
D1 develops new energy crops into sustainable commercial fuels. We provide technology and services for the breeding, development, planting and harvesting of new varieties of commercial biofuel crops, focusing on alternative, sustainable feedstocks that are not subject to the same price pressures as food-grade crops.

Jatropha originated in South America, where from ancient times extracts from its leaves and seeds were used as medicines. Jatropha’s medical qualities derive from curcin, a chemical present in the plant’s shoots and leaves, which is effective as an antiseptic but can be poisonous if ingested in large quantities.

Learning of its medicinal qualities when they came to South America in the 16th century, Portuguese sailors took jatropha to Africa and India. It now grows from the forests of Brazil to the tropical islands of Fiji. In Africa it is widely used as a hedge to protect crops from foraging livestock, who avoid the leaves. Jatropha is still used as a traditional medicine in India, Africa, and the Philippines.

Jatropha vegetable oil can be extracted from the seeds by crushing. It is inedible and has been been used for centuries to make basic oil lamps. Until recently there has been no concentrated attempt to pioneer jatropha as commerical source of vegetable oil to make fuel.

 

 

 

Wrightspeed Inc.

Wrightspeed Inc.

Phone:	1 650 787 8729
E-Mail:	X1@wrightspeed.com
Media Inquiries:	press@wrightspeed.com
Investor Inquiries:	investorrelations@wrightspeed.com
Founder:	ian@wrightspeed.com

At the dawn of the energy age, there is increasing interest in minimizing the amount of oil used for personal transportation.

With recent and ongoing advances in battery technology, the electric car is making a comeback. With 3 times the energy efficiency of the best hybrids (4 times better than fuel-cell vehicles), and the ability to use energy from any source via the existing grid, electric cars probably are the long-term solution.

But oil is still relatively cheap, and batteries are still expensive. When the rising curve of oil price crosses the falling curve of battery price, there will be a mass market for electric vehicles.

In advance of that market, Wrightspeed is developing an advanced electric drivesystem technology, and making use of an interesting property of electric drivesystems: there’s no tradeoff between performance and efficiency.

Internal combustion engine (ICE) cars have an intrinsic conflict: if they are built for performance, they are thirsty; if they are built for efficiency, they are slow.

This is not the case for electric cars. The Wrightspeed X1 prototype is faster than anything available except the Bugatti Veyron, yet it returns 170mpg equivalent in city driving. If we reduced the power to one quarter of the current power, the car would be correspondingly slower – but it would be no more efficient.

This means Wrightspeed can design and build and sell very interesting cars – extremely fast cars – without compromising energy efficiency. The drivesystem technology they develop can be applied to other vehicles in the future, as economics permit.

If reduction in fuel consumption is the goal, it would be better to replace 10mpg cars with 20mpg cars, than to replace 50 mpg cars with 100mpg cars. 5 times better.

Counter-intuitive? Here’s the arithmetic. The 10mpg car uses 10 gallons to go 100 miles. The 20 mpg car uses 5: a saving of 5 gallons. The 50 mpg car uses only 2 gallons for 100 miles, so replacing it with a 100mpg car only saves one gallon.

The fuel consumption problem is not that the current hybrid cars only get 50 mpg. That’s not where the fuel is going. Look around you on the freeway, and count the 10-15mpg cars. That’s where the fuel is going. If we can replace a 10mpg car with an electric car, at roughly 100mpg well-wheels equivalent, we save 9 times as much fuel per mile than if we replace the 50mpg hybrid commuter car.

At Wrightspeed, they will do exactly that, starting with extreme performance supercars.
And the improvements we are making in electric drivesystems raise the performance driving experience to a new level. Faster, more fun, and safer. We expect that some of these enhancements will eventually find their way into all cars.

Product

The X1 prototype is a concept car, and a test platform. It is not a production car, and never will be. It’s a proof-of-concept vehicle that will lead to a production car in the future.

To build it as a prototype, we looked for the best of the best, in today’s technology. We chose the AC Propulsion (www.acpropulsion.com) 3-phase AC induction motor and inverter – the highest power/weight ratio system available; brilliantly engineered, and with about a decade of durability testing to date. For the chassis, we turned to Ariel, in Somerset. (www.arielmotor.co.uk). Simon Saunders, the designer of the Atom and the founder and CEO of Ariel, has created in our view one of the world’s most beautiful cars, as well as the quickest, lightest chassis on the road. To drive it is a revelation. Simon’s background is in automotive design, notably for Aston Martin and Porsche. The Atom chassis was substantially modified for the electric drivetrain, but retains the original styling.

The X1 prototype is just the beginning. It meets its design specs of 0-60 in 3 seconds, 170 mpg equivalent; and at 1536 lbs, is only 36 lbs over the design target of 1500. It really does raise the performance driving experience to a new level, even for racing drivers. No clutch, no shifting, precise and immediate control of torque in drive and braking, perfect traction control…first gear takes you to 112mph…

In recent track testing, on street tires, it achieved the following performance:
0-30 mph: 1.35 sec
0-60 mph: 3.07 sec in 117 ft
0-100 mph: 6.87 sec
0-100-0 mph 11.2 sec
Lateral g: 1.3
Braking g: 1.2

The X1 production car will be better… much better.