Cellana, formerly HR BioPetroleum, Inc., (HRBP), founded in Hawaii in 2004, uses the most productive plants on earth marine microalgae to produce feedstocks for biofuels, skin and personal care products, nutritional oils, renewable chemicals and aquaculture and livestock feeds while simultaneously reducing industrial emissions of CO2. In 2007, HRBP and Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the international energy company, formed Cellana as a separate join venture to build and operate a six-acre demonstration facility to grow marine algae and produce vegetable oil for conversion into biofuel. HRBP became the sole owner of Cellana LLC in January 2011.
Cellana’s patented ALDUO™ technology is based on the coupling of enclosed photobioreactors, in which a pure, non-GMO strain of algae is grown continuously in controlled conditions, with open ponds, in which the algae are grown at larger-scale and harvested frequently. This hybrid approach minimizes overall cost and avoids the contamination problems that have previously hampered large-scale commercialization of open-pond-based algae production.