Advanced BioFuels USA

(AFP/RTE) At LanzaTech’s lab in the Chicago suburbs, a beige liquid bubbles away in dozens of glass vats. The concoction includes billions of hungry bacteria, specialized to feed on polluted air – the first step in a recycling system that converts greenhouse gases into usable products.

Thanks to licensing agreements, LanzaTech’s novel microorganisms are already being put to commercial use by three Chinese factories, converting waste emissions into ethanol.

That ethanol is then used as a chemical building block for consumer items such as plastic bottles, athletic wear and even dresses, via tie-ins with major brands such as Zara and L’Oreal.

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“We really want to get to a point where we only use above ground carbon, and keep that in circulation,” says Kopke (microbiologist Michael Kopke) – in other words, avoid extracting new oil and gas.

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LanzaTech, which employs about 200 people, compares its carbon recycling technology to a brewery – but instead of taking sugar and yeast to make beer, it uses carbon pollution and bacteria to make ethanol.

The bacteria used in their process was identified decades ago in rabbit droppings.

The company placed it in industrial conditions to optimize it in those settings, “almost like an athlete that we trained”, said Kopke.

Bacteria are sent out in the form of a freeze-dried powder to corporate clients in China, which have giant versions of the vats back in Chicago, several meters high.

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The clients in China are a steel plant and two ferroalloy plants. Six other sites are under construction, including one in Belgium for an ArcelorMittal plant, and in India with the Indian Oil Company.

Because the bacteria can ingest CO2, carbon monoxide and hydrogen, the process is extremely flexible, explains Zara Summers, LanzaTech’s vice president of science.

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“In the future, I think the vision is there is no such thing as waste, because carbon can be reused again,” said Summers.

Sustainable aviation fuel

LanzaTech has also founded a separate company, LanzaJet, to use the ethanol to create “sustainable aviation fuel” or SAF.

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LanzaJet is aiming to achieve one billion gallons of SAF production in the United States per year by 2030.

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For LanzaTech, the next challenge is to commercialize bacteria that will produce chemicals other than ethanol.

In particular, they have their sights set on directly producing ethylene, “one of the most widely used chemicals in the world”, per Kopke – thus saving energy associated with having to first convert ethanol into ethylene.  READ MORE