LanzaTech Aims to Fuel Jets and Make Consumer Goods from Recycled Carbon Pollution

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May 17, 2019

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by Tom DiChristopher (CNBC) -LanzaTech sells technology that transforms carbon pollution into ethanol, a renewable fuel and feedstock for chemicals. -Founded in 2005, the start-up is now aiming to produce sustainable jet fuel and chemicals that can be used in consumer goods. -The company ranks No. 15 on CNBC’s 2019 Disruptor List of the world’s most innovative start-ups. — Chicago-area start-up LanzaTech has proved it can transform greenhouse gas emissions into fuels and chemicals. Now, the company is trying to bring its clean tech to the masses.

That means consumers could soon be taking flights powered by recycled carbon pollution and wearing sneakers synthesized from planet-warming waste gas.

Founded in New Zealand in 2005, LanzaTech sells technology that converts greenhouse gas emissions from steel mills and other industrial facilities into ethanol, a renewable fuel and chemical feedstock. The process allows LanzaTech’s customers to turn their carbon pollution into products like jet fuel and the chemical building blocks for plastics.

The company’s innovative technology and potential to shake up the biofuels space earned LanzaTech the No. 15 spot on CNBC’s 2019 Disruptor list.

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Turning waste into biofuel

LanzaTech gets around that resource problem by partnering with industrial customers to capture carbon-rich emissions and pump them into a reactor filled with microbes first identified in rabbits. The microbes feed on the carbon and produce ethanol, the biofuel that is blended into most U.S. gasoline.

“The founding of company was really on the basis of this ideal feedstock philosophy, where we take existing high-volume, low-value waste streams from society, industry and agriculture to produce” fuel and chemicals, says Dr. Sean Simpson, co-founder and chief scientific officer at LanzaTech.

One of LanzaTech’s biggest initiatives is producing jet fuel from its sustainable ethanol. The endeavor took a major step forward last fall when the company partnered with Virgin Atlantic and Boeing to complete the first commercial flight powered in part by LanzaTech jet fuel.

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Today, the LanzaTech method is producing commercial quantities of ethanol from emissions captured at the Jingtang Steel Mill in northeastern China. Steel giant ArcelorMittal is also building a LanzaTech system at a steel mill in Ghent, Belgium.

There are also plans under way to produce ethanol from an oil refinery in India and the metals sector in South Africa. LanzaTech has also shown it can produce ethanol from municipal waste in Japan. READ MORE (includes VIDEO)

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