$4M ARPA-E award to Lanzatech to improve design of bioreactors for waste-gas-to-fuels fermentation

[Bill USA]

$4M ARPA-E award to Lanzatech to improve design of bioreactors for waste-gas-to-fuels fermentation technology

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/09/20130922-lanza.html

LanzaTech, a producer of low-carbon fuels and chemicals from waste gases, was awarded a $4-million grant by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) as one of the 15 REMOTE projects (earlier post) receiving a combined $34 million to find advanced biocatalyst technologies that can convert natural gas to liquid fuel for transportation.

LanzaTech and its partners, The City College of New York (CUNY), Louisiana State University (LSU) and Michigan Technological University (Michigan Tech) will collaborate to extend LanzaTech’s core fermentation technology to unlock the potential of waste methane gases through novel and smaller-scale bioreactor design. The project will combine LanzaTech’s expertise in gas fermentation and reactor design with experimental reactor design expertise at the CUNY Energy Institute, and reactor modeling capabilities at LSU. LanzaTech and Michigan Tech will validate the economic and life cycle analysis impacts of this innovative technology as compared to the current state of the art.

LanzaTech uses a novel biological fermentation process to transform carbon-rich wastes and residues from industrial sources into low carbon fuels and chemicals. Methane is well-suited for LanzaTech’s fermentation technology.

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[font size="3"]LanzaTech is the first company to scale gas fermentation technology to a pre-commercial level, developing and successfully operating two facilities that convert waste flue gas from Baosteel and Shougang steel plants into ethanol. Both facilities in China operated at annualized production capacity of 100,000 gallons. Site location and engineering plans for two full commercial facilities are under way and commercial production is expected to begin in 2014. [/font]
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