United States based LanzaTech, a global leader in gas fermentation technology, has spent more than a decade designing bacteria that digest carbon gases and produce fuels like ethanol.  The company’s bioreactors are packed with trillions of carbon-hungry microbes that are fed carbon emissions to turn pollution into valuable raw material commodities.

“The rising temperature across the globe points out the fact that fear of climate change is real. It may differ in impact but it is real. If we don’t take action to mitigate the carbon emission concerns now, we will see about 18 million deaths by the end of this decade. In order to tackle the situation, we should look at carbon not just as a commodity but a precious resource. We must look at the carbon locked in every product and be equally mindful in judicious use of this carbon,” said Preeti Jain, Director, Business Development and GovernmentRelations, LanzaTech.

Jain shared his insights through a presentation on LanzaTech: Recycling Carbon, Creating Value’ at the ‘NextGen Chemicals & Petrochemicals Summit 2022’organized by Indian Chemical News on July 21-22, 2022.

“We need to re-look at the carbon economy. If we analyze the energy sector, renewables are already making a transition. We already have a road-map from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for adoption of renewables. But in the longer run, there will be sectors such as aviation and chemicals that will for mid-term and long term require carbon. And from where this carbon will come will decide our future. LanzaTech as a leader in carbon capture and transformation is working on that vision through our technology platform of gas fermentation. Instead of chemical catalyst a bio-catalyst, a class of bacteria, is used for fermentation and the main input that is used is gas. Agri-residue or municipal waste can be gasified and made into sim gas and used as feed stock. We can make fuel ethanol that can be used as a blending component in gasoline or also converted into ethylene molecules. These molecules can be recycled, closing the loop of carbon,” said Jain.

“CO2 is mostly looked at as a challenge but at LanzaTech we see it as an opportunity through our technology platform. We can take that CO2, bring green hydrogen right from the renewable sources or use it by doing electrolytic splitting of CO2 and that can be a feedstock. The process is truly circular, taking CO2 directly or using the industrial points. The biocatalyst used in the process is full of protein and can be used as animal feed,” added Jain. 

Outlining the company’s priority, Jain said, “Our vision is to create a pipeline of biocatalysts with an aim to switch over from chemicals that we use in our daily lives and processes. It is not a scientific fiction but from ideation, to demonstration to commercialization, a journey of 15+ years backed by our scientists and financial investors. In 2018, we achieved commercial success with our technology in a commercial plant of a leading steel player in China. The plant has so far produced 90 million litres of fuel ethanol and also avoided 190,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. Early this year, another plant came up in China. All these gases could have escaped into the atmosphere but there is a technology that can not only stop that but also convert these into something valuable.”

“It is not just the commercialization of the technology but also the stability of the robust operations that our team has achieved in China. In another example, ArcelorMittal is utilizing our technology in one of their mills at Ghent in Belgium. This mill will be producing 64,000 tons of bio-ethanol and expected to mitigate more than 3,50,000 metric tons of CO2 each year. One more accomplishment has been that our technology demonstration has been used in conversion of municipal solid waste to fuel ethanol at a Sumitomo Chemical plant in Tokyo,” said Jain while sharing a few examples. 

Speaking in Indian context, Jain added: “I would like to emphasize flexibility, robustness and adaptability of the technology to handle a diverse number of feedstocks. World’s first refinery of gases to ethanol is being set up by Indian Oil which is using this technology at one of their plants at Panipat which is in advanced stages of completion. Similarly, we are working with Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL) to set up an agri-residue plant in India. CO2 is an important feedstock for us and we believe climate change can be addressed in a great deal by capturing carbon and using it for valuable products. Often we are asked what will be done with such a huge amount of ethanol as gasoline can take only a certain mandated amount of ethanol for blending. So, the way we are looking at the new economy is to create a new mode of thinking where we produce carbon smart products. India’s top brands are utilizing platform chemicals such as ethanol to convert it into chemicals ethylene, biopolymers and polyesters to produce products used in our daily lives.” 

“Rather than producing the ethanol, we want to produce mono ethylene glycol (MEG) directly with the LanzaTech process and break away from the fossil fuel chain to the recycled carbon chain. We are using synthetic biology and computational methods to create desired strains of microbes. At our world’s first anaerobic biofoundry lab, we have synthetic biologists and computational analysts helping us in programming microbes by understanding their genetic profile through big data and artificial intelligence,” said Jain.

Sharing her insights on the transportation industry, Jain concluded: “Aviation sector has to reduce carbon emission by 50% by 2050 and sustainable aviation fuel is one of the solutions that airlines are looking for. With our technology we can produce sustainable aviation fuel, infact in 2018, we had trial runs with Virgin Atlantic. So ethanol is not just a blending fuel or platform chemical but also an opportunity to create a sustainable fuel industry in India. If all the waste in India could be pooled together, we would have been producing 30 billion litre of fuel ethanol today. Even if 10% of that would have been harvested, it could have led to creation of a sustainable fuel ecosystem in India not just for road transport but also aviation decarbonization.”