Further success on algae biofuel

"We have now achieved commercial-scale continuous harvesting of tonnes of wild algae at the Marlborough oxid-ation ponds, so we can take the step up to commercial scale production of biocrude," said Aquaflow chairman Barrie Leay.

The company has also commissioned its newly built proprietary biorefinery and made its first machine run.

"These are major steps forward for us and we expect to be able to produce commercial quantities of biocrude within the next few months," he said.

Mr Leay said Aquaflow was a "clean" fuel. He said that in the Aquaflow process "there is no conflict with land use or with the production of food crops, which is becoming an increasing world problem".

Mr Leay explained that the essence of Aquaflow's process was to use algae to capture current sunlight through photosynthesis, in a process similar to the one which occurred many millions of years ago when the world's oil and gas deposits were laid down with the help of ancient sunlight.

"An extraordinarily beneficial by-product of the Aquaflow process is potentially releasing a clean water resource of millions of litres, to be recycled and available for irrigation, industrial washing, cooling, and so on," Mr Leay said.

Aquaflow's technology has already been licensed for much of Asia, through Aquaflow's 20 percent cornerstone shareholder, PurePowerAsia.

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