Smart Energy Capture

Fueling the future through carbon cycling

To help meet these increasing global demands for affordable, low-carbon transport fuel, LanzaTech has developed a gas fermentation process that produces ethanol and high-value chemicals from industrial flue gases and waste resources. Carbon monoxide is generated in large volumes as a manufacturing by-product in industries ranging from steel production to oil refining. Rather than allowing this gas to be released into the atmosphere as CO2 emissions, LanzaTech captures it and uses it as a resource. This cost-effective carbon capture greatly improves the facility’s overall energy efficiency and profitability while also reducing its carbon footprint.

Clean Industrial growth  requires new ideas

At the heart of the LanzaTech process is our patented, wholly-owned microbe that uses gas feeds as its sole source of carbon and energy for fuel and chemical production. Alternative technologies are restricted to the use of food or farmed resources for alternative fuel production. Because our microbe is feedstock agnostic and completely tolerant to the extreme levels of contaminants found in steel mill and other industrial off gases, our process can use the lowest cost, most readily-available resources, including hydrogen-free gases. These include:

•          Industrial flue gas from steel mills and other processing plants. These gases are rich in carbon monoxide and poor in hydrogen.

•          Syngas generated from any biomass resource (e.g., municipal waste, organic industrial waste such as tires and waste wood).  Syngas contains both carbon monoxide and hydrogen.

•          Coal-derived Syngas rich in carbon

monoxide and hydrogen.

•          Steam reformed methane (e.g., biogas) that is rich in hydrogen.

By allowing the use of all these available resources, our process provides a strategically important route to eliminating the controversial “Food vs. Fuel” issue associated with traditional ethanol production.

"Waste equals food, whether food for the earth, or for a closed industrial cycle."

W. McDonough