(104c) Recycling Carbon- Innovating for a Carbon Smart Future

Waste carbon can come from the chemistry of certain manufacturing processes (e.g. steel production) and they can also come from gasification of agro, forest and unsorted, unrecyclable municipal wastes. Biotechnology has enabled us to convert this waste carbon into fuels and everyday products, turning our carbon problem into an economic opportunity keeping the skies and oceans clean and blue for all. This presentation will address the various waste gas resources available and touch upon the gas fermentation pathway as a technology enabler.

Rapid population growth and climate change are posing some of the most urgent challenges to mankind and have intensified the need for low-cost manufacturing of fuels, chemical-building blocks, materials and food from sustainable resources.

Gas fermentation using autotrophic microorganisms offers a sustainable path to these products from a range of local, highly abundant, waste and low-cost resources. LanzaTech has pioneered a gas fermentation process using anaerobic acetogenic microbes capable of fixing carbon oxides.

While 10 years ago, acetogens were considered genetically inaccessible and mass-transfer of gases was considered a major scale up hurdle, LanzaTech has since developed a suite of synthetic biology tools and successfully scaled up the process from the laboratory bench to full commercial scale. In May 2018, LanzaTech successfully started up a world-first commercial scale (48k MTA) gas fermentation plant using emissions from the steel making process as feedstock. To date, this facility has mitigated the equivalent of over 70,000 tons of CO₂.

The technology has been demonstrated with a diverse range of additional low-cost feedstocks including waste gases from other industrial sources (e.g., processing plants or refineries) or syngas generated from any biomass resource (e.g., unsorted and non-recyclable municipal solid waste, agricultural waste, or organic industrial waste) that vary in composition of CO and/or H₂ with CO₂. Integration with electrolysis further enables direct CO₂ capture using zero-carbon electricity in absence of CO and/or H₂.

In order to maximize the value that can be added to the array of gas resources that the process can use as an input, LanzaTech has established advanced models and a unique biofoundry that enables automated strain engineering of anaerobic organisms and strain screening in context of flammable and toxic CO and H₂ gases. Through this platform, LanzaTech has demonstrated direct production over 50 different products from gas.