LanzaTech Chief Sustainability Officer: ‘There’s No Need to Take Carbon Out of the Ground; There’s Enough above Ground to Make Everything We Need’

by Elaine Watson (Ag Funder News) A specialist in converting carbon emissions from industrial processes into high-value products via a continuous microbial fermentation process, Illinois-based LanzaTech started out as a fuel company, but is also seeking to make waves in new areas from packaging to food. AgFunderNews (AFN) caught up with chief sustainability officer Freya Burton (FB).

AFN: In a nutshell, what does LanzaTech do?

FB: Essentially, we ferment gases instead of sugars, primarily to make ethanol that can be used as a building block to make lots of other things. So in the case of our recent partnership with Plastipak, the ethanol is converted into ethylene, ethylene oxide, and then monoethylene glycol [MEG] which is used to make PET… so that’s how we get from pollution to packaging.

What we do is quite complicated, but the simple way I think about it is that we don’t need to extract carbon anymore; there’s no need to take carbon out of the ground, because there’s enough above ground carbon to make everything we need.

AFN: Where are your facilities and what emissions fuel your fermentation process?

FB: We have three commercial plants producing ethanol in China and three coming online this year in India, Belgium, and China. In all the plants except for the one in India, they’re primarily using carbon monoxide generated from steel production. In the India plant, we’re using carbon-dioxide-rich gases but there’s also some hydrogen [in the emission stream], which we need for our process. And that’s the big issue for other technologies that are just focused on C02: where is the hydrogen going to come from?

Transporting gases is not easy, so we integrate our facilities [with the source of emissions] so we don’t have to have lots of gas lines connecting to another site. It also means we can tap into the existing infrastructure you get at an industrial site in terms of utilities, water and so on.

Our demonstration-scale plant in Japan uses [emissions from] municipal waste [as feedstock] and we also have similar plants planned in the Middle East and Italy.

AFN: Is LanzaTech looking at gas fermentation for animal feed?

FB: Yes. So ethanol is our main product, but when the bacteria [that converts the carbon emissions into ethanol] reach the end of their useful life, we can filter them off and freeze dry them to get a protein dense biomass. This biomass has gone through a lot of the food trials where our commercial sites are in China for use in animal feed.

AFN: Is there potential to use your gas fermentation process for human food applications?

FB: Absolutely, ... we’re focused on the conversion of these types of gases into proteins, but we’ve also done work on producing omega-3 fatty acids from acetate.

AFN: Tell us about your partnership with Plastipak to make lower carbon PET (Polyethylene terephthalate)?

So some of the customers who’ve been using it [the new Plastipak bottles] in Switzerland and Germany have described it as ‘made from captured carbon.’

But we do actually have the technology now to do a type of chemical recycling we’re testing in Japan where we take mixed waste that includes plastics and instead of incinerating it, we superheat it into a gas that then gets fermented by our bacteria. READ MORE

LanzaTech Chief Sustainability Officer: ‘There’s No Need to Take Carbon Out of the Ground; There’s Enough above Ground to Make Everything We Need’

AFN: In a nutshell, what does LanzaTech do?

AFN: Where are your facilities and what emissions fuel your fermentation process?

AFN: Is LanzaTech looking at gas fermentation for animal feed?

AFN: Is there potential to use your gas fermentation process for human food applications?

AFN: Tell us about your partnership with Plastipak to make lower carbon PET (Polyethylene terephthalate)?

More than 50,000 articles in our online library!

Advanced Biofuels USA Policy Statements and Handouts!

Our Sponsors

FREE Subscription! Advanced Biofuels USA events calendar; policy and actions; education newsletters

Donate

ARCHIVES

CATEGORIES

tags