LanzaTech was founded in 2005 in New Zealand with headquarters now in Skokie (US, Illinois). LanzaTech is a leading Carbon Capture and Transformation (“CCT”) company combining synthetic biology and engineering. LanzaTech is indeed the global leader in gas fermentation technology converting carbon rich gas streams to valuable products using its proprietary microbes that feed on gases (rather than sugars, as in traditional fermentation). LanzaTech’s naturally occurring microbe has been optimized to provide economic routes to ethanol, jet fuel and high value chemicals from a variety of carbon-rich gas streams, such as:
– industrial off-gases from steel and ferro-alloy mills
– off-gases from petroleum refineries, petrochemical complexes and gas processing facilities
– syngas generated from any solid resource, including agricultural waste, municipal solid waste (MSW) and organic industrial waste
– reformed biogas
– CO2 + Green H2
By capturing the carbon contained in these waste gas streams LanzaTech’s gas fermentation process reduces industry carbon emissions whilst producing platform chemicals that serve as building blocks to indispensable consumer products such as rubber, plastics, synthetic fibers and fuels.
LanzaTech’s technology is being commercialized around the world through licensing to companies that will build, own, and operate gas fermentation facilities. LanzaTech’s first Six commercial plants are operational and have already produced over 130,000 metric ton of fuel-grade ethanol from steel mill and ferroalloy off gas and reduced over 320,000 metric ton of GHG emissions, with follow-on plants in construction and engineering.
In terms of Intellectual Property LanzaTech has over 1000 patents issued and 450 patents pending covering: LanzaTech’s microbes, process design, key mechanical equipment, industrial integration, product development, feedstock flexibility, by-product recycle, and fermentation optimization.
LanzaTech has worked with several third parties, including Michigan Technological University (MTU), E4Tech, Ecofys, and Tsinghua university to study the environmental impacts of its process and end products using waste emissions that remain allocated to steel. These studies have shown that the LanzaTech gas fermentation process can produce fuels from steel mill off-gases with greenhouse gas emissions that are up to 60% lower than gasoline.
