National Algae Association Executive Director Presents in Washington, DC

Jan. 26, 2011 - PRLog -- National Algae Association's Algae Commercialization, Research and Business Networking Forum on January 13-14, 2011, proved that commercial-scale algae production is just around the corner, according to NAA Executive Director Barry Cohen.  Attendees and presenters collaborated to further develop the knowledge, equipment and skills to take algae out of laboratories and into commercial-scale development.

"One of the key developments from the conference in Houston on January 14, 2011 was an announcement by BARD Holding Inc., a leading U.S. algae production company, that it is coming forward to have its commercial process fully benchmarked in accordance to the National Algae Association guidelines. BARD will be the first company to subject itself to three sets of independent validation and has agreed to share results with the industry. This will help validate algae oil content and commercial scale production claims with hard data." The executive director of the NAA, Barry Cohen, viewed a presentation of BARD's commercial-scale algae production system and shared his impressions to attendees at the conference, concluding with "...BARD's technologies are unique and promising and we anxiously await confirmation of the data by unrelated outside third-party labs."

Following the conference, Cohen addressed the Leadership Forum US in Washington, D.C.  and discussed the urgency of redirecting a portion of algae research funds towards the construction of commercial algae production farms so the US will be better poised to compete in the world market for algae biofuels and co-products. NAA members have started to build on acreage throughout the US and are looking for financing for full-scale commercial algae production facilities.   Most of the algae research hurdles have been addressed, and engineering and scale-up issues have been identified.  NAA believes that it and its members have resolved those issues and are ready to scale-up.  "New research and enhancements will go on in the background," according to Cohen,  "but we must scale-up the algae production industry in order to know if any of the existing technologies developed in universities can be scaled on hundreds of acres throughout the US".

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NAA's mission is to fast track commercialization of algae as an alternative fuel to reduce US dependency on foreign oil and to create jobs in the US by putting algae researchers, algae growers, farmers and producers, and equipment manufacturers together