A new age for
petroleum.
The world is going to run out of oil — full stop. We engineer algae to turn sunlight and methane-producing waste into fuel and food, at industrial scale, starting now.
One cell, engineered for two markets
Chlorella vulgaris is a fast-dividing freshwater microalgae with an unusually favorable split between protein and oil. Cultivated at scale, it produces a fuel stream and a food stream from the same batch.
Waste in. Fuel and protein out.
The process solves two problems in one loop: a waste stream that's currently a meaningful source of methane emissions, and a fuel and food supply that can't run on fossil inputs forever. Fungus sits between them, turning a volatile input into something algae can use.
Animal & ag waste
Factory farm feces, food scraps, and nitrogen waste — left alone, they off-gas methane; processed, they're a feedstock.
Fungal fermentation
Neutralizes volatility in the raw waste, converting it into a stable, high-nitrogen, high-calcium feed source.
Algae cultivation
Chlorella vulgaris feeds on the fungal output, growing into biomass rich in oil and complete protein.
Parts of this are already running
Algae isn't going to fuel the world tomorrow. But every stage of this loop — waste processing, algae-derived fuel, and industrial-scale cultivation — already has working precedent, independently, elsewhere.
Animal-waste processing at plant scale
A World Bank-backed facility near Criuleni, Moldova converts animal by-products into safe industrial inputs — proof the feedstock side of this loop is already an active industrial category, not a lab curiosity.
Algae-derived aviation fuel
Viridos has spent two decades engineering algae strains that produce aviation-grade oil in seawater vessels — confirming the oil half of this process at the molecular level, independent of freshwater or farmland.
Industrial open-pond cultivation
Open-pond algae farms already run at serious industrial scale — single sites spanning hundreds of acres for the pigment and protein markets. The infrastructure pattern is proven; what's new is a feedstock loop cheap enough to carry that same scale into fuel.
The revenue isn't just oil
Fuel is the headline, but it isn't the only market. Every batch of Chlorella vulgaris also produces a complete protein source — meaning the same cultivation run serves both the energy sector and the nutrition sector, independently priced and independently sold.
That's not a side effect — it's the de-risking mechanism. Most fuel startups need fuel-market economics to work on day one. This one doesn't.
How do you make hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil?
That's not one problem — it's three. Each has its own answer, and none of them require inventing something that doesn't already exist.
Every cell is a factory
A chemical plant scales by pouring more concrete. A cell scales by dividing. Once a strain is proven, doubling it costs almost nothing — the same biology just repeats itself. Volume comes from doubling time, not from capital expenditure.
The tanks already exist
Brewing, pharma, and biofuel have run fermentation at hundred-thousand-gallon scale for decades. We're not inventing new infrastructure — we're pointing infrastructure that already exists at a new feedstock loop.
More oil per tank, not more tanks
The fastest way to more gallons isn't more tanks — it's more oil per tank. Strain selection and cultivation conditions push the same cell toward higher lipid yield, so every batch does more before the next tank gets built.
Meet the toiler.
Im'ma getcha
"The oil will run out... demand will not. Let's get the carbon out of the air and back into your engine"
TRAB LABORATORIES started from a simple, uncomfortable fact: the world is going to run out of oil, and most proposed fixes either don't scale or don't pencil out. This world of complexities requires cooperation with other life for our continued survival. The founder started building the industrial biology to do it directly — pairing waste processing, fermentation, and algae cultivation into one closed loop.
The work: growing algae alongside hypha-forming fungi to study how the two interact structurally, then building and running the fabrication and bioprocess systems inside labs built from scratch, under constrained infrastructure. It's system-level design, iterative testing, and direct control of every process variable — tangible incremental progress, disciplined execution, functional and verifiable systems over theoretical ones. The approach favors things that are provably real over things that merely sound good on a slide.
What it takes
to build this.
TRAB Laboratories is early — deliberately so. Here's the straight-up version of what's needed, what it costs to keep running, and where we're not going to sugarcoat the risk.
What we need
A place to tune the strain
Somewhere to actually run the biology — dialing in lipid yield, protein content, and growth rate before it goes outside.
Room to grow it
Open land with decent sun for the ponds and equipment — the physical footprint the whole thing actually runs on.
People and starter cultures
Founding algae and fungal stock, plus the people to build it out and keep it running once land and lab work are underway.
What it costs to keep it running
Nothing exotic — three recurring lines: people, materials, and general upkeep as things scale up.
Three stages, one loop
The protein side pays first — you don't need fuel-grade scale to sell into nutrition markets, so early batches can bring in money before the fuel side is anywhere near volume.
Once the waste-to-fungus-to-algae loop is proven at pilot scale, feedstock gets cheaper than standard cultivation — and that shows up as better margin on everything we sell.
Fuel volume scales with land and cultivation capacity. It's the bigger, slower market — and the one that actually earns the "new age for petroleum" line.
We'd rather say it now
Expensive up front
Lab, land, and build-out cost real money before the first commercial-scale dollar comes in.
Outdoors is harder
What works in a controlled lab doesn't automatically work in an open pond — the strain has to hold up outside.
Waste is annoying to move
Getting animal and ag waste reliably to where it needs to be is a logistics problem as much as a science one.
Oil is still cheap
Fuel-grade output has to compete with a very established industry on price — the protein side carries things until that gap closes.
Want to be part of building this?
Let's talk.
Whether you're thinking about putting money in, want to partner up, or just have questions about how this actually works — this goes straight to the team.