Manta Biofuels Launches Crowd Investment Campaign

by Joanne Ivancic* (Advanced Biofuels USA) This week, Manta Biofuels has launched a crowd investment campaign on Republic and began reaching out to colleagues, business associates, mentors and friends, offering them a chance to invest in this growing business.

Dedicated to doing their part to fight climate change, Manta Biofuels developed a system to grow, harvest and process algae into oil that can be used for heating or powering heavy duty engines or ocean-going vessels, or as a feedstock for existing refineries.

Founded in 2014, Manta Biofuels co-founder, Dr. Ryan Powell, considers the company “a mission-driven organization designed to shift society away from fossil fuels and towards clean, renewable power” by defossilizing the transportation sector with a focus on air travel, shipping and long haul trucking which cannot be electrified and will require liquid fuels decades into the future.

Over the years developing the Manta system, they have raised over $3 million from the Department of Energy, Department of Natural Resources, and the State of Maryland. With this funding they developed and deployed an end-to-end renewable crude oil production system.

In 2018, Manta completed its first sale to a residential customer. With this new investment funding launch, they are ready to scale up, continuing their partnership with the University of Maryland.

Manta’s algae-based oil can be used to make renewable replacements for all of the products that come from fossil fuels such as renewable gasoline, jet fuel, asphalt, bunker fuel, and heating oil.

Over the past 6 years, Manta developed a patented, state of the art algae-to-oil production process using an agricultural rather than manufacturing system with three basic steps: (1) grow, (2) harvest, and (3) convert. They grow the algae in wild open polyculture ponds, harvest with their patented machinery and convert using a hydrothermal liquefaction process. Testing by Alcor Petrolab has shown their renewable oil meets all specifications for use as heating oil.

Initially, they are targeting small, local customers with strong sustainability goals. This includes households and businesses who purchase 100 to 100,000 gallons of heating oil at a time.

Their first customers are east coast universities who cannot meet their heating and power needs with electric-only solutions like heat pumps. For example, Manta has secured two letters of intent to sell 240,000 gallons of renewable oil to the University of Maryland and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. This represents a $1 million revenue opportunity.

Eventually, they expect their algae-based oil to serve as a biocrude for larger refineries, for marine fuels and heavy industry. Replacing petroleum crude at the refinery level enables defossilization without extensive infrastructure overhaul. READ MORE includes VIDEOS

November 24, 2020 note from Manta: We’ve received a tremendous response to Manta Biofuel’s investment campaign on Republic. So much so that we’re proud to announce that we have raised over $280,000 from almost 700 investors! Our supporters range from professional investors putting in thousands of dollars to everyday people who want to help by chipping in as little at $150.