OriginOil announced Monday that it has made what it calls a breakthrough in the production of oil from algae.

The Los Angeles-based company said it has developed a new technology for harvesting oil that is simpler than current systems and promises to drive down costs in the fledgling algae-to-oil market.

“Our process completely redefines the harvesting,” said Riggs Eckelberry, chief executive of OriginOil. “It is a dramatic difference in energy requirements. It could be an order of magnitude.”

Algae grow suspended in large volumes of water, and the oil is extracted from each cell. That oil, water and biomass must then all be separated for processing, a time-consuming and energy-intensive process. But the OriginOil technology achieves all these steps in one pass without the need for chemicals or heavy machinery.

In less than one hour, the oil, water and biomass separate by gravity, the company said.

Mr. Riggs said the company wants to be a technology provider and does not have plans to build its own commercial production facilities. The company is initially targeting five markets: biodiesel, ethanol, waste-to-energy, wastewater treatment and industrial plants with gas-fired furnaces. For the latter, Mr. Riggs said his algae could be used to recycle the carbon dioxide emitted from these plants to produce methane, which in turn would fuel the furnaces.

OriginOil has a multi-year research and development contract with the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory. The two groups will co-develop computer models to better understand the energy balance of algae-based oil. After that, the lab will validate Origin’s technology and help improve it. Origin has the right to license all technology that comes out of the project.

“When the DOE validates what you’re doing, it is great for getting grants and finding partners,” Mr. Riggs said.

By 2010, he wants his technology to be in a field demonstration project.