Joule (company)

Joule was a Massachusetts-based company with a focus on utilizing solar energy to convert waste into fuel.Its technology specifically used microorganisms that aided in transforming solar energy and carbon dioxide into liquid fuel.

The company has developed technology to produce the fuel in a system called the SolarConverter, in which all stages of the process take place.The technology consisted of engineered catalysts that changed waste carbon dioxide and sunlight into fuels such as ethanol or hydrocarbons for diesel, jet fuel, and gasoline. The type of fuel that was created was determined by which microorganisms and which transformation process the company chose.

In order to produce ethanol, the process usually requires feedstock, which involves acres of land and water consumption. Joule has created a system that did not required as many resources or land. The resources that the company did need, such as waste carbon dioxide, could be recycled from other sources, such as coal-fired energy plants.