From our Corporate Headquarters in Hayward, California, our science and biology teams are dedicated to optimizing our algae platform for growth. Here, scientists study thousands upon thousands of alga strains to naturally select and improve characteristics, creating the highly efficient, productive and resilient strains to grow today and in the future.
Strains for Gain
Scientists at Aurora use a variety of standard and proprietary selection approaches to identify samples of interest. We are then able to isolate single strains and test them for various parameters such as oil content, fatty acid profile, growth rate, productivity, optimal growth temperature, and many more. Once we isolate strains with beneficial properties, we employ unique science to improve these strains with our desired characteristics.
Our Little Sun Worshipers
Our algae use photosynthesis to convert sunlight energy into chemical energy used for algal cell growth and cell maintenance. The efficiency which algae use light energy is a major determinant of algal growth and productivity. In the wild, algae harvest light quite efficiently, storing the energy to be used when their natural environment prohibits light. Our scientists have successfully modified the characteristics of wild type algae to avoid their natural light storing tendencies, and instead, efficiently harvest light in their open-pond environment. We use high-throughput fluorescence imaging techniques to screen libraries and selectively optimize characteristics to naturally evolve these cultivars.
Protect and Defend
Like all agriculture, algae are vulnerable to microbial invasions and predators. Our crop protection department screens chemicals that effectively destroy grazers and undesirable algae without harming our specific algae species. They also work to bolster our algae’s resistance to crop protection chemical agents, generating a cookbook with many patent pending recipes.
Knowledge is Power
Aurora’s analytics team works harmoniously with our biologists and engineers to provide rapid and accurate feedback vital to selecting Aurora’s algae strains and developing the methods for growing and processing them post-harvest.
The analytics team is critical to every stage of execution, from the selection of algae strains, to the evaluation of feeding regimes, to assessing approaches for oil extraction and post-harvest biomass processing, to ensuring that Aurora’s finished products meet specifications.
Process This
Aurora’s process development team develops the technology needed to convert the harvested algae into commercial products. Unlike the production of biodiesel from animal and vegetable oils, a standard process for converting algae into biodiesel and other algae based products does not yet exist. Therefore this team must design the processes while balancing costs, efficiencies, and quality. Our complex, novel process involves many steps — including chemical reactions, liquid and solid extractions, atmospheric and vacuum distillations, solids handling and drying and reactive-distillation. In our laboratory, we define, develop, test, model, and optimize each of these processes with the goal of deploying scalable commercial processes that are functional, safe, and cost-effective. Our process development laboratory is a small-scale mirror of a commercial laboratory, producing sample quantities of all of our products for regulatory approvals, specification development, and customer testing.
