ABOUT

The genesis of Verpond was a new idea of how to produce microalgal biomass in quantities and prices previously unobtainable. Microalgae have been touted as an alternative source of biomass for food, feeds, fertilizers, fuels, and chemicals for decades because of their rapid growth rates compared to conventional agricultural products. However, significant production has failed to materialize because of the incompatibility of conventional algal production systems with large scale operations and their inherently high costs.

Pictured below are conventional raceway ponds for production of microalgae. Each pond is expensive to construct and uses large amounts of valuable clean water and power. The largest ponds are limited to approximately 2 - 3 acres, because larger systems are unable to provide adequate mixing against any prevailing winds. As a result, conventional production of algal biomass is limited in scale and more expensive than comparable biomass grown using conventional agricultural techniques.

                                                                       (C) Texas A&M AgriLife

As a result, microalgae have been only a tiny contributor to annual biomass production. In 2021, world microalgae production was 0.0003 billion tonnes (Fishery and Aquaculture Statistics – Yearbook 2022 2025), while conventional primary crop production was approximately 10 billion tonnes (World Food and Agriculture – Statistical Yearbook 2024 2024).

Verpond has invented a new ocean based algal cultivation system called OAACS™ that significantly increases the possible scales of production while reducing costs and use of scarce resources. The increase in scale is achieved by changing the system geometry and growing the microalgae in areas of the ocean that are ecologically barren. Instead of using a racetrack geometry, Verpond's system is unidirectional, aligned with the wind, and calculations indicate that the wind provides enough mixing and selective mass transfer with the surrounding environment so that external supplies of concentrated carbon dioxide are unnecessary for culture growth. Economic projections indicate that the resultant algal biomass can be profitably sold at approximately 1/6 of the cost of comparable high protein conventional crops like soybeans. This will enable production of microalgal based bioproducts like foods, feeds, fertilizers, fuels and chemicals that are price competitive with conventional supplies, thereby improving supply chain security.

Verpond was awarded an NSF SBIR Phase I grant and is working with several academic and non-profit collaborators to demonstrate proof of concept for its designs. Initial work was focused on finite element analyses of the cultivation system and scaled down continuous production of biomass. Current and future activities involve development of improved cultivation system infrastructure components, scale model wave tank testing of the system, construction of an ocean based pilot cultivation system, and continuous growth of algae at increasingly larger scales until full scale commercial production is achieved.