Company's technology uses steel mill off-gases for ethanol production.
LanzaTech, a Chicago-based firm that has developed and is marketing gas fermentation technology, has announced that the board of directors for Taiwan-based China Steel Corp. (CSC) has approved a $46 million capital investment in a LanzaTech commercial ethanol facility. The approval follows the successful demonstration of the company’s carbon recycling platform at the White Biotech (WBT) Demonstration Plant in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, which uses steel mill off gases for ethanol production.
LanzaTech’s gas fermentation process uses proprietary microbes to capture and reuse carbon-rich waste gases, reducing emissions and pollutants from industrial processes such as steel manufacturing, while making fuels and chemicals that displace those made from fossil resources.
In November 2012, CSC and LCY Chemical Corp. formed a joint venture called White Biotech (WBT), as part of a Green Energy Alliance with LanzaTech. According to a LanzaTech press release, the resulting demonstration plant met or exceeded all ethanol production milestones, and CSC’s board formally approved the capital to move to commercial scale.
A 17 million gallons per year facility is planned for construction by the fourth quarter of this year, with the intention to scale up to a 34 million gallons per year commercial unit soon after. Initial product focus will be industrial ethanol and gasoline additives, with plans for increased product diversity using LanzaTech’s microbial capability.
“LanzaTech will help create a more sustainable future by recycling carbon from the steel mill and enabling green growth through the production of useful everyday products. We will have to work even closer to complete this important project,” says Dr. Jo-Chi Tsou, chairman of CSC.
“CSC has long been a champion of utilizing new technologies to create a better future, and we are proud to help make this a reality,” says LanzaTech CEO Jennifer Holmgren. “We need to keep fossil resources in the ground and carbon recycling is one way we can achieve this. If we are to keep within our global carbon budget, we need all technologies to contribute and, more importantly, we need forward looking industries and organizations, such as CSC, to bring these technologies to market.”