Beijing Shougang LanzaTech New Energy Science & Technology Company Earns Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB) Certification

http://www.einnews.com/pr_news/175535517/beijing-shougang-lanzatech-new-energy-science-technology-company-earns-roundtable-on-sustainable-biomaterials-rsb-certification

LanzaTech's Joint Venture With Shougang Jingtang Iron and Steel United Company and the Tang Ming Group, Earns First-Ever RSB Certification for Waste-Gas to Biofuel Process

WASHINGTON, DC and BEIJING, CHINA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/05/13 -- Beijing Shougang LanzaTech New Energy Science & Technology Co., Ltd. and the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials Services Foundation, the implementing entity of the RSB, announced today that Beijing Shougang LanzaTech New Energy Science & Technology Co., Ltd. has earned RSB's sustainability certification for the joint venture's facility that converts waste steel mill gases to sustainable biofuels.

The RSB is a global sustainability standard and certification system for biofuels and biomaterials production. The facility, which utilizes LanzaTech technology, is the first RSB-certified biofuel plant in China, and the first of its kind anywhere to receive this key certification for industrial carbon capture and utilization.

"The joint venture uses a process that creates a sustainable biofuel and does so by efficiently reusing greenhouse gases that would have otherwise been released into the atmosphere," said Peter Ryus, RSB Services' CEO. "This solution, which does not impact the food chain or land use, meets the RSB principles and practices and serves as an example of how continued innovation in the industry will lead to sustainable biofuels in the future. We are honored to be working with LanzaTech and their joint venture partners on greenhouse gas reduction and global sustainability improvements."

RSB certification shows the joint venture's commitment to environmental improvements through a novel biological approach that converts waste carbon emissions from steelmaking into biofuels and chemicals. Using the RSB methodology and assumptions based on commercial production, it is estimated that ethanol from the process may reduce life cycle greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent compared to petroleum fuels.

In addition, the joint venture partners anticipate that the process will improve local air quality by materially reducing nitrogen oxide (NOx) and particulate emissions. The technology has the potential of making a significant global impact by reusing up to 150 million tonnes of CO2 from the global steel industry alone.

The use of novel gas fermentation technology to convert industrial waste gases into biofuels is aligned perfectly with the RSB Principles and Criteria, which go beyond greenhouse gas emissions reductions to focus on economic and social sustainability. By using a widely available waste resource located in areas typically unsuitable for agriculture, LanzaTech's process reduces overall emissions without negatively impacting the food chain or causing land use changes. By enabling the production of fuels from available steelmaking waste, Beijing Shougang LanzaTech New Energy Science & Technology Co., Ltd. will help China balance economic growth with sustainability, as well as increase its supply of domestic biofuels.

RSB certification provides assurance that biofuels and biomaterials deliver on their promise of sustainability. Beijing Shougang LanzaTech New Energy Science & Technology Co., Ltd. chose to work with RSB because of its rigorous sustainability standard, auditing approach, and its broad acceptance. The RSB standard provides a comprehensive approach that incorporates the standard with other operational, management and physical standards such as ISO risk management and environmental management to ensure every base is covered.

"The RSB certification is an incredibly important step for the development of our commercial production facilities which we expect to bring online in 2014," said Dr. Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech. "In addition, we trust this certification will help accelerate the acceptance of biofuels made through carbon capture technologies and serve to showcase the possibilities opened up by thinking of carbon emissions as an opportunity, not just a problem."

RSB is a preferred standard of major airlines globally, including LanzaTech's partner Virgin Atlantic and the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group, an aviation industry-led coalition that is supporting the development, certification, and commercial use of lower carbon renewable fuels, derived from sustainable sources.

Virgin Atlantic President Sir Richard Branson previously described the LanzaTech process as "one of the most exciting developments of our lifetime and a major breakthrough in the war on carbon." Reflecting on this latest development, he says "RSB's certification of the Beijing facility is a crucial step to ensure this revolutionary new fuel will meet the highest possible environmental standards and will result in a radical reduction in our carbon footprint."

Virgin Atlantic Chief Executive Craig Kreeger notes: "Our partnership with LanzaTech is a key part of our Change is in the Air sustainability program. Beyond our significant fleet upgrades and our comprehensive fuel efficiency programme, this breakthrough opportunity to pioneer away from fossil fuels offers us the best possible chance of substantially reducing the carbon emissions associated with our flying programme. Key to that has always been ensuring that any new fuel meets the highest possible sustainability standards, and we view RSB as the gold standard scheme to help us to achieve this. We're excited and committed to help hasten the day when we are using LanzaTech's RSB-certified fuel to power our aircraft."

The audit summary report is available on the RSB website, www.rsbservices.org. The audit was conducted by SCS Global Services (SCS), www.scsglobalservices.com, a leading global provider of third-party environmental and sustainability certification, auditing, testing, and standards development for nearly 30 years.

About LanzaTech

LanzaTech is a leader in gas fermentation technology. It provides novel and economic routes to fuels and high value chemicals from waste gas streams. LanzaTech's unique process provides a sustainable pathway to produce platform chemicals that serve as building blocks to products that have become indispensable in our lives such as rubber, plastics, synthetic fibers and fuels.

LanzaTech's technology solutions mitigate carbon emissions from industry without adversely impacting food or land security. With commercial facilities in China slotted for construction in 2014, LanzaTech, a company founded in New Zealand, is now a global organization. More information is available at www.lanzatech.com.

About Shougang Group

Shougang Group is a large enterprise group founded in 1919. While Shougang's main business is iron and steel, the Group is also engaged in mining, machinery, electronics, construction, real estate, services and international trading. Shougang has made great progress, especially since economic reforms began in China 30 years ago.

Entering the new century, the steel industry is facing unprecedented pressure and challenges, as well as unprecedented development opportunities. Shougang has created a first class iron and steel enterprise by actively promoting optimization of the industry's structure, promoting continuous innovation and pioneering new product development and production processes. Shougang has also changed its traditional product line to produce high-grade sheet metal, an historical change. In the past thirty years, Shougang steel's production capacity has increased from 1.79 million tons to 12.19 million tons and sales income has increased from 1.443 billion yuan to 132 billion yuan. The Group has paid more than 57.66 billion yuan in tax revenue and has made a significant contribution to the development of the modern Chinese iron and steel industry. More information is available at http://www.shougang.com.cn/shougang_cn_web/
 
About Tang Ming Group 

Tang Ming Group Ltd was established in November 1999. It was successfully formed into a corporation with China Shougang Group in 2003 to establish Shougang Tangming (Auckland) Corporation Ltd. In 2011, Beijing Shougang LanzaTech New Energy Science & Technology Co., Ltd was established in Beijing.

About RSB Services
The Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB) certification system helps farmers, feedstock processors and biomaterial producers prove their sustainability to the world. Certified entities demonstrate that their operations comply with ambitious yet practical safeguards, including the protection of natural or rare ecosystems, food security, and respect for human rights to land, water and decent work conditions, and the management of water resources. With unmatched NGO support, global market compatibility across all feedstocks, practical guidance and tools for an ongoing sustainability system, RSB Services Foundation, the implementing entity of the RSB, helps companies manage their risk and increase shareholder and consumer confidence through the certification of their businesses. More information about RSB certification can be found at www.rsbservices.org. 

Media Contacts:
John Williams
Scoville PR for LanzaTech
jwilliams@scovillepr.com
+1-206-625-0075

Helena Kennedy
Director of Communications at RSB Services Foundation
hkennedy@rsbservices.org
+1-703-725-4626

Cellulosic Ethanol Inches Forward

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/512501/cellulosic-ethanol-inches-forward/

Kevin Bullis
March 13, 2013

The technology for making fuel from wood chips and grass is late, but still on the way. 

A few years ago, large scale, billion-gallon-a-year cellulosic ethanol production seemed around the corner. Instead we’ve seen companies fail, or scale back and delay their plans, as they find it hard to secure financing or bring down costs. The technology seems to have dropped off the radar, except for the occasional news of opposition to a mandate requiring the use of cellulosic ethanol.

Still, there are signs of progress. This week ZeaChem announced it started production at a 250,000 gallon demonstration plant that is making chemicals that can be used to make ethanol and other things. Two companies, Ineos and Kior, have finished construction at larger plants that can produce 8 and 11 million gallons of fuel. They’re in the process of starting those plants up. And Poet and Abengoa hope to finish construction on even larger plants—25 million gallon ones-by the end of the year.

It’s still not clear that these companies can make ethanol profitably. ZeaChem is hedging its bets. It can make ethanol if that’s the most profitable option. Or it can convert the acetic acid it makes to chemicals such as propylene. Other advanced fuels companies, such as Amyris, are also pursuing chemicals at first.

But there are plenty of challenges involved in trying to break into existing chemical markets, especially if the chemicals are low-cost commodities. For example, chemicals like propylene are typically made by big petrochemical companies at huge well-integrated plants that make many chemicals, and have low costs that will be hard to compete with.

LanzaTech Announces Datuk Ir. (Dr) Abdul Rahim Hj Hashim, President of Malaysian Gas Association, to Board of Directors

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/lanzatech-announces-datuk-ir-dr-abdul-rahim-hj-hashim-president-of-malaysian-gas-association-to-board-of-directors-2013-03-11

36 Year Veteran of Oil & Gas Industry Will Help Company Accelerate Commercialization of Novel Technology to Convert Unused Gas Streams Into Marketable Commodities 

 

ROSELLE, IL, Mar 11, 2013 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- LanzaTech, a producer of low-carbon fuels and chemicals from carbon-containing gases, announced the appointment of Datuk Ir. (Dr) Abdul Rahim Hj Hashim, the current President of the Malaysian Gas Association, former Chief Executive of PETRONAS Oil Refinery and a 36 year oil and gas industry veteran to its board of directors. 

"As we take our technology further into the fuel production value chain, Datuk Rahim's extensive leadership experience in the oil and gas industry will be incredibly valuable," said Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech. "In addition to the significant potential to create marketable commodities from industrial waste streams containing carbon monoxide, we are seeing increasing opportunity to leverage our technology with underutilized, or otherwise unusable gas streams." 

Datuk Rahim, the President of the Malaysian Gas Association, began his career in PETRONAS soon after graduating from the University of Birmingham, UK in electrical and electronics engineering. Throughout his 36 years of involvement in the oil and gas industry, he has held a number of high profile positions of increasing responsibility. As Vice President at PETRONAS for 10 years, he covered three different portfolios: Vice President of Human Resource Management for the PETRONAS Group for four years; vice president of the Gas Business for three years and Vice President for Research and Technology for three years. In addition, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of PETRONAS Oil Refinery (Melaka) Sdn Bhd as well as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Malaysian Refining Company Sdn Bhd (MRC). 

While serving in PETRONAS, he also held several key positions in a variety of gas industry organizations, both in Malaysia and at an international level including serving as President of the Asia Pacific Natural Gas Vehicle Association (ANGVA) and President of the International Gas Union (IGU). A professional engineer, Datuk Rahim serves on the Board of Engineers (BOE), Malaysia and also the Chairman of the Engineering Accreditation Council (EAC) Malaysia. He is also an Associate Member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. In 1997, he completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. 

"I've been very impressed with the progress LanzaTech has made to date developing and scaling its core technology to convert waste gases into renewable fuels and chemicals," said Datuk Rahim. "I look forward to helping the company extend that platform into new feedstocks, including CO2, methane and other carbon sources as well as new end products." 

In 2012, LanzaTech partnered with PETRONAS to develop new approaches to effectively capture carbon, with an initial focus on using CO2 from a variety of sources including refinery off gases and natural gas wells to produce acetic acid, a high value chemical with applications in the polymers and plastics markets. 

About LanzaTech 

LanzaTech is a leader in gas fermentation technology. It provides novel and economic routes to fuels and high value chemicals from waste gas streams. LanzaTech's unique process provides a sustainable pathway to produce platform chemicals that serve as building blocks to products that have become indispensable in our lives such as rubber, plastics, synthetic fibers and fuels. 

LanzaTech's technology solutions mitigate carbon emissions from industry without impacting adversely food or land security.

Currently commissioning a second pre-commercial facility in China using steel mill off gases for ethanol production, LanzaTech, a company founded in New Zealand, is now a global organization with full commercial operation targeted for 2014. More information is available at www.lanzatech.com

LSU AgCenter Commissions Advanced Biofuels Pilot Plant

http://www.biofuelsjournal.com/info/bf_articles.html?ID=129936

 Date Posted: January 28, 2013

St. Gabriel, LA—The fledgling biofuels and bioprocessing industry in the South took a step forward Friday, Jan. 25, with the formal commissioning of a pilot plant at the LSU AgCenter Audubon Sugar Institute.

This indicates success in several areas, said LSU AgCenter Vice Chancellor John Russin.

The infusion of federal funding will benefit the state and the sugar industry as well as the biofuels and bioprocessing industry and the rural economy, Russin said.

“This is an amalgam of a true team effort.”

The pilot plant is part of a larger project funded by a five-year, $17.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture through its agriculture and food research initiative, said William Goldner, national program leader for sustainable bioenergy in the USDA Institute of Bioenergy, Climate and Environment.

The grant came as a result of a competitive peer review of proposals to create regional systems for sustainable production of biofuels and biobased products, Goldner said.

“We want to enhance existing agriculture and improve opportunities for rural communities.”

Dedicated to producing biofuels and biochemicals from agricultural crops and byproducts, the pilot plant is the centerpiece of the AgCenter’s Sustainable Bioproducts Initiative, said AgCenter project director Vadim Kochergin.

It will focus on processing sweet sorghum, energy cane and other grassy feedstocks into convertible sugars, fiber and bioproducts for further refining into butanol, gasoline, isoprene and biochemicals, he said.

The pilot plant is a scaled-down version of a typical sugar mill, said Juan Miguel Bueno, president and CEO of Manufacturera 3M, S.A. de C.V. in Cordoba, Mexico.

Bueno’s company fabricates sugar mills used in Louisiana, so his challenge was to design and produce the pilot plant.

“It’s exactly the same as a big mill but on a smaller scale,” Bueno said of the project that took about five months to engineer and manufacture.

“By developing new things, we can produce new energy and new resources,” he said.

The pilot plant is seen as a milestone for the project that Kochergin described as a “work in progress.”

“The facility can be scaled up to any capacity,” Kochergin said. “The focus is on primary processing of sweet sorghum, energy cane and other grassy feedstocks.

"We can facilitate projects targeting evaluation and validation of technologies as well as training of research and operating personnel.”

“This is a tremendous opportunity to identify potential feedstocks, not only for Louisiana but all of the South,” said Carrie Castille, associate commissioner for government affairs and science advisor in the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry.

“This project will provide long-term, lifecycle assessment for continued crop production with respect to weather,” Castille said.

Louisiana is in a unique position for feedstock production, and lifecycle assessment will provide information on how various crops perform during different weather patterns, such as drought.

“The benefits this facility will give to Louisiana landowners is forward thinking,” said Klein Kirby, chairman of A. Wilbert’s Sons, LLC, a leading Louisiana land development company.

“This is a huge tool for the Louisiana sugar industry, for the processors and for the landowners,” Kirby said.

For more information, call 225-578-5839.

Greener planet is goal for 3 startups

http://www.equities.com/news/headline-story?dt=2012-12-16&val=832224&cat=material

By Julie Wernau, Chicago Tribune McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

Dec. 16--If the glut of companies billing themselves as "solutions" providers is any indication, the world has no shortage of problems.

Green tech companies take on some of the most complicated, difficult problems to solve. They tend to be problems created by our mere existence, chief among them our massive demand for energy. The more we rely on energy to power our electronics, our vehicles and our lives, the more pollution we churn into our land, water and air.

The Tribune checked in with three local green tech startups at various stages of development. They haven't changed the world yet, but they're working on it.

COMPANY: LanzaTech

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: Global warming, a huge challenge as energy demand is expected to double within 40 years.

FUNDS RAISED: $100 million

It may sound like sci-fi, but LanzaTech produces gas-eating "bugs" that don't require oxygen to survive.

In April, the company's microscopic bacteria began ingesting carbon monoxide from a steel mill in China. Carbon monoxide goes in one end of the bacteria and ethanol comes out the other.

With a few genetic tweaks, the bug can produce a wide range of fuels and chemicals from gases that companies spend money to get rid of. The idea, says Jennifer Holmgren, the company's chief executive, is to trap nasty gases that float from steel mills, power plants and chemical factories, turning them into products that are useful and profitable.

The company recently inked a deal with Petronas, the national oil company of Malaysia, to develop a modified version of the bug that takes in carbon dioxide and produces acetic acid, a chemical companies need to produce polymers used in plastics.

"Rather than trying to sequester carbon deep into the earth, we will 'bury' it in a chemical," Holmgren said. "In this way, companies can not only comply with emissions reduction requirements, but also generate revenue along the way."

When Holmgren talks about the technology's potential, she pulls up a map of the world, showing partnerships and agreements the company has with companies from Boeing Co. in Chicago and Kansas-based Invista, the world's largest nylon producer, to Indian Oil Co. in New Delhi and Mitsui & Co. Ltd. in Japan.

Out of the company's various projects, the carbon monoxide-eating bacteria are the furthest along in the path toward commercialization. This month, LanzaTech finished a demonstration project for China's largest steel manufacturer, Baosteel, at a plant near Shanghai.

LanzaTech successfully produced the equivalent of more than 100,000 gallons of ethanol per year from just a fraction of the carbon monoxide the company creates in the steel-making process.

"You're literally driving for miles watching this steel mill," Holmgren said, explaining its vast size -- and its potential to produce hundreds of millions of gallons of ethanol per year.

The technology creates a financial incentive to trap the gas rather than flare it, a common practice that produces carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming. Through a series of pipes, the gas enters a vessel filled with the organism, which is floating in water. Fuel comes out the back end and is pumped through a distiller to create pure ethanol.

Because of the success of that demonstration, the steel company has ordered the first of what will eventually be three or four units, each about $80 million, that are each expected to produce 30 million to 50 million gallons of ethanol per year. Each unit pays itself back in under five years, Holmgren said.

"We don't want it to be green for green's sake. If it is, no one is going to use it," she said.

With 140 employees worldwide, LanzaTech doesn't have any revenues to report yet. Holmgren said LanzaTech expects to grow to profitability between 2013 and 2015.

Coskata: Biofuels Digest’s 5-Minute Guide

http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2012/10/23/coskata-biofuels-digests-5-minute-guide/

Jim Lane | October 23, 2012

Address:
4575 Weaver Parkway, Suite 100, Warrenville, Illinois 60555

Year Founded:
2006

Company description:

Coskata is a technology leader in the production of alternative fuels and chemicals. Our proprietary process has been demonstrated at significant scale and offers:

• High yields
• Low costs
• Feedstock flexibility

While the technology platform is capable of producing multiple fuels and chemicals from a diverse array of feedstocks, they are initially focused on commercializing our natural gas conversion process.

Natural gas is an attractive feedstock due to its abundant supply and low cost, and they expect to achieve production costs that are significantly lower than competitive approaches to fuels and chemicals production.

Major Investors 
General Motors, Total, Khosla Ventures, Blackstone Group, Advanced Technology Ventures, GreatPoint Ventures, Coghill Capital Management, TriplePoint Capital, Globespan Capital Partners, Arancia Industrial, Sumitomo.

3 Top Milestones for 2009‐12

1. In the summer of 2012, Coskata announced its plans to switch its feedstock focus to natural gas at its first commercial facility. “We achieve two major benefits from our move to natural gas: 1) we can achieve superior economics due to natural gas’ abundant supply and historically low price leading not only to favorable economics for the company, but also for consumers; and 2) the capital requirements for a natural gas commercial-scale facility will be significantly less since we do not have to budget for biomass handling or gasification.”

2. In October 2011, Coskata announced that it had demonstrated two years of successful operation at its Semi-Commercial Facility, producing ethanol from both biomass feedstocks and natural gas.

3. In August 2011, Coskata completed its first close of Series D financing, with all major investors from previous rounds participating.

3 Major Milestone Goals for 2013‐15

1. Complete financing for first commercial facility.
2. Broker feedstock and offtake partnerships for commercial facility.
3. Complete construction of first commercial scale natural gas-to-ethanol facility

Business Model:
Owner-operator and technology licensor

Competitive Edge(s):

Coskata’s technology platform offers industry-leading feedstock flexibility, allowing the company to utilize the most cost advantaged domestic feedstock available today, natural gas. Virtually any carbon-containing input materials can be converted to syngas, including natural gas, wood, municipal solid waste, agriculture residues, coal and industrial gases.

“With natural gas prices of $4/mmBtu, we expect to achieve unsubsidized production costs well below that of current transportation fuels such as gasoline, diesel and corn-based ethanol. In fact, even if natural gas prices were to increase to 4 times today’s levels, we would still be competitive with current corn ethanol production costs.

“By utilizing natural gas as a feedstock, not only can we produce transportation fuels at a price that creates value for consumers, we can also build much larger plants, because we will not be limited by availability of biomass within a specific radius. By producing at industrial scale, we can have a material impact on transportation fuel supply in this country.”

Research, or Manufacturing Partnerships or Alliances.
Coskata is a member of the Renewable Fuels Association, the Advanced Ethanol Council, the Advanced Biofuels Association, and the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

Stage: 
Coskata unveiled its demonstration scale, integrated biorefinery facility in 2009, and is currently focused on financing and constructing a full-scale, natural gas to ethanol commercial facility.

Company Website

Chief Executive Officer:
William Roe

Business development or sales contact:
Rich Troyer, Chief Business Officer

Project information

Location: 
Madison, Pennsylvania

Materials or products produced
Ethanol

Year, month in service
Operation began in October of 2009.

Status:
Operated from October 2009 until the Fall of 2011 (over 15,000 operating hours)

Feedstock:
Natural gas, wood chips, and simulated waste materials

Processing technology
Syngas fermentation (involving syngas production, fermentation and separation)

Petronas and LanzaTech to Recycle CO2 into Sustainable Chemicals

http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/10/14/4336054/petronas-and-lanzatech-to-recycle.html

Published: October 14, 2012

ROSELLE, Ill. & KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — LanzaTech, a producer of low-carbon fuels and chemicals from waste gases, and PETRONAS, the national oil company of Malaysia will work together to accelerate the development and commercialization of technologies to produce sustainable chemicals from carbon dioxide (CO₂) and natural gas.

The agreement blends Petronas' deep experience and assets in the petroleum industry with LanzaTech's gas fermentation technology to create an economical and sustainable source of high value chemicals.

LanzaTech's proprietary fermentation process converts carbon monoxide (CO) in industrial waste gases, reformed natural gas and gas derived from any biomass source, into low carbon fuels and chemicals.

LanzaTech and PETRONAS will work together to extend this technology to include carbon dioxide (CO₂) containing gases from a variety of sources including refinery off gases and natural gas wells to produce acetic acid, a high value chemical with applications in the polymers and plastics markets.

"PETRONAS and LanzaTech have the ability to significantly impact the future of carbon capture by fundamentally changing the way we deal with waste CO₂," said LanzaTech CEO, Jennifer Holmgren.

"Rather than trying to sequester carbon deep into the earth, we will 'bury' it in a chemical. In this way, companies can not only comply with emissions reduction requirements, but also generate revenue along the way."

The joint development agreement (JDA) builds on the relationship between the two companies established earlier this year when PETRONAS Technology Ventures SdnBhd (PTVSB), the venture arm of PETRONAS, invested in LanzaTech's Series C round.

"We invested in LanzaTech because we saw an opportunity for PETRONAS to benefit from the integration of LanzaTech's technology in multiple areas of our business," said Haida Shenny Hazri, CEO of PTVSB. "This is a natural extension of LanzaTech's core gas fermentation technology and it is a natural fit with Petronas' commitment to achieving a sustainable future for all."

About PETRONAS

PETRONAS is the national oil and gas company of Malaysia and is wholly-owned by the Government of Malaysia. Together with its subsidiaries and associated companies, PETRONAS, a FORTUNE Global 500® company, has fully integrated oil and gas operations in a broad spectrum of the oil and gas value-chain. Its business activities include (i) the exploration, development and production of crude oil and natural gas in Malaysia and overseas; (ii) the liquefaction, sale and transportation of LNG; (iii) the processing and transmission of natural gas and the sale of natural gas products; (iv) the refining and marketing of petroleum products; (v) the manufacture and sale of petrochemical products; (vi) the trading of crude oil, petroleum products and petrochemical products; and (vii) shipping and logistics relating to LNG, crude oil and petroleum products. More information is available at: http://www.petronas.com.my.

About LanzaTech

LanzaTech is a leader in gas fermentation technology. It provides novel and economic routes to fuels and high value chemicals from waste gas streams. LanzaTech's unique process provides a sustainable pathway to produce platform chemicals that serve as building blocks to products that have become indispensable in our lives such as rubber, plastics, synthetic fibers and fuels.

LanzaTech's technology solutions mitigate carbon emissions from industry without impacting adversely food or land security.

Currently operating a pre-commercial facility in China using steel mill off gases for ethanol production, LanzaTech, a company founded in New Zealand is now a global organization with full commercial operation targeted for 2013.

More information is available at www.lanzatech.com

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/10/14/4336054/petronas-and-lanzatech-to-recycle.html#storylink=cpy

Burning Man, Burning Microbe: Biofuels beyond biomass

http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2012/10/12/burning-man-burning-microbe-biofuels-beyond-biomass/

Jim Lane | October 12, 2012 

 Can you have a biofuel without processing an intermediate biomass?
 

Can post-biomass technologies revolutionize fuel and chemical production?

 

Fuels and chemicals can make people mighty uneasy, when you think about them.

With fossil fuels, the issues include the uneven distribution of resources and wealth, national security, price and price volatility, and carbon emissions. So along came first-generation biofuels.

Then, along came second-generation biofuels. Using new technologies, non-traditional crops and forest, animal, crop or municipal residues, using land that had fallen out of traditional production – or, in the case of residues, using no additional net land at all.

But there were still issues of an uneven distribution of resources and wealth (e.g. land-grabbing in the hot bioenergy zones), and issues of price and price volatility. Above all, price – the technologies have struggled to beat fossil fuels, or first-gen biofuels, on price.

Which brings us to third-generation biofuels. They are, as a class, post-biomass – and their basis as a biofuel lies not in processing an organic substrate but in the fact that the processing mechanism itself is an organism.

Are they biofuels? We think so – even if they are post-biomass. They do what organisms have done for eons to make biomass in the first place: convert lifeless CO2, sunlight and water and nutrients into a new material.

Today, there are four classes of technologies that directly create a fuel without first making a biomass.

Post-biomass sugar fermentation

 

In this class of technologies, the organism directly produces a fuel from a sugar and, if the sugar is made via synthetic biology rather than extracted from biomass, it is a post-biomass path. The key step is the creation of a post-biomass sugar – from there, a host of fermentation technologies can make a fuel or chemical. Though some of them, like the technology at Amyris, Solazyme and LS9 is highly versatile and, to an extent, programmable for a wide variety of target fuels, chemicals and biobased products and intermediates.

Post-biomass sugar, that’s what Proterro is working on. Proterro’s microorganism synthesizes sucrose from sunlight, CO2, nutrients and water. They are in the process of training the microorganism to make it fast enough to be a viable technology at industrial scale. If it works – that a post-biomass substrate from which other magic bugs can produce a huge array of fuels and chemicals. Without digging them up from the ground, or using land or sea to grow biomass.

Gas fermentation

 

In this class of technologies, the microorganism ferments synthesis gas – or syngas, a combination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide – into an alcohol. The syngas can be made by gasifying biomass – but it can also be made directly from, say, methane emissions or natural gas.

There are five technologies that, broadly speaking, have this capability today. Coskata, INEOS Bio, LanzaTech, Siluria and, as a part of its hybrid liquid-gas fermentation process, Zeachem. In the case of Coskata, they are proposing to ferment, primarily, natgas for some time to come, while INEOS Bio has gone the route of gasifying second-gen feedstocks such as MSW and yard waste. LanzaTech has gone the route of acquiring its gases from partnerships with steel companies – that are, in turn, seeking to reduce the blast furnace’s carbon footprint as well as monetize a stream of waste gases.

With Siluria’s biocatalysts, metals and metal oxide crystals are grown on biological templates in a technique developed in Angela Belcher’s lab at MIT -allowing unique ways to manipulate the surface of catalysts as they enable the chemical reaction necessary to transform methane.

Solar fuels

 

In this class of technologies, the microorganism directly produces a target alcohol or alkane – using sunlight, CO2, water and nutrients – and then secretes it into a chamber from which it can be extracted from the liquid medium in which the microorganism lives.

There are two technologies around today that have this broad capability. There’s Algenol and there’s Joule. In Algenol’s case, the microorganism is a strain of algae and it secretes ethanol, which is separated via evaporation from the medium and then collected and purified. In the case of Joule, the microorganism secretes either alcohol, diesel fuel, or other target chemicals inside a capsule unit.

In the case of solar fuels, the yields per acre can be exotic and transformative. Whereas first-gen fuels yield somewhere between 50 and 600 gallons of fuel per acre, Algenol is reaching 7,000 gallons of ethanol per acre in real-world trials, while Joule is reporting ethanol yields as high as 15,000 gallons per acre per year.

Plus, they use saline or brackish water instead of depleting fresh-water.

Electrofuels

 

In this class of technologies, they are not only post-biomass, they are post-sunlight. Generally speaking, they operate much the same as the solar fuels – excepting that the microorganisms draw energy from electricity instead of from sunlight. The underlying current can, of course, be supplied by a variety of post-biomass sources, including hydro, wind, solar or even natural gas.

This is an experimental class of technologies, for which R&D is being supported by ARPA-E in a multi-year research program that originated in 2010.

Most recently in electrofuels, a team of researchers at U-Wisconsin-Madison demonstrated they can use a electricity-and-water based fuel cell to convert acetone into isopropanol, a chemical compound with a wide variety of pharmaceutical and industrial applications, including as a gasoline additive.

The bottom line

 

Biofuels do not have to be made from biomass, or use arable land, or fresh water. People who cling to those dogmas in their critique of biofuels are just poorly informed, or have an axe to grind.

The extent to which these technologies will dominate, or be viable, in the future is uncertain – they have their own journeys towards commercialization and scale, just as second-gen technologies do. But that is a function of cost, and to some extent is a function of oil prices and the appetite of a given society to accelerate its weaning off the oil dope.

But consider the comparative footprint of, say, corn ethanol vs solar ethanol. Today, the US produces around 13 billion gallons of ethanol from around 24 million (effective) acres. The same land footprint (but, using non-arable land and saline water) could yield up to 360 billion gallons of solar ethanol, using the Joule data that we have – or, around 190 billion gallons of drop-in diesel fuel.

Or, to put it another way, you could produce 240 billion gallons of solar ethanol or 125 billion gallons of solar diesel using the land footprint of the Mojave Desert. That’s twice what the US consumes in diesel fuel – using captured CO2, non-potable water and some nutrients.

Burning Man or Burning Microbe?

 

Or, in a frenzy of radical self-reliance, you could produce massive amounts of fuel in the Nevada’s Black Rock Desert – which would provide a whole new spin on the Burning Man festival held each year in the Black Rock. Though, in this case, it would probably be Burning Microbe.

That’s apt, for mankind has to kill biomass to make energy for our bodies – while plants can synthesize energy out of lifeless materiel. What could be more biobased than something that makes life from lifelessness, instead of the other way around?

And, in Joule’s case, they say they can produce it for 40 percent less than the cost of a barrel of oil, today, from which refiners have to add cost to make fossil-based diesel fuels. Again, it is early days for the technology – so we are still in the “if, then” phase of analysis. It’s not quite yet time to break out the bubbly.

But, what an “if, then”.

LanzaTech secures $15 million debt financing

http://www.ethanolproducer.com/articles/9206/lanzatech-secures-15-million-debt-financing

By Susanne Retka Schill | October 12, 2012

 

LanzaTech recently closed on $15 million in debt financing from Western Technology Investment. Earlier this year, LanzaTech closed a $55.8 million Series C funding round led by Malaysian Life Sciences Capital Fund, bringing the total capital raised to date to more than $100 million.

LanzaTech has developed a novel biological process of carbon capture involving proprietary biological microbes that can use a variety of waste gases as a nutrient source—including waste gases from industry, which would otherwise be flared as carbon dioxide. The process can also use syngas generated from any biomass resource, including municipal, organic industrial and agricultural wastes, as well as reformed natural gas.

The company has a 100,000 gallon-per-year demonstration facility operating in China using steel mill off gases for ethanol production. Full commercial operation is targeted for 2013. “The ethanol produced at the China steel mill has been tested and approved as fuel grade ethanol and we are currently preparing samples for additional testing,” CEO Jennifer Holmgren told Ethanol Producer Magazine. “The focus of the pre-commercial facility has been to run the process at scale and it has successfully demonstrated this to date.”

The company continues work at its Freedom Pines facility in Soperton, Ga., the former Range Fuels facility purchased at a January foreclosure sale. “We have increased our team on site and are accelerating the shakedown of the gasifier,” Holmgren said. Range Fuels was developing a cellulosic ethanol process based on Fischer-Tropsch technology and had been commissioning the facility when it ceased operations. 

The new financing for LanzaTech comes from WTI, a private investment firm based in Silicon Valley, that has provided more than $3 billion of debt and equity capital to technology and life science companies ranging from early-stage private companies to publicly-traded companies, including Facebook, Google and Juniper Networks. Their investments range from $250,000 to $30 million and are structured as fully usable, unrestricted growth capital.

"LanzaTech's team has developed an innovative approach to carbon capture and reuse that is already operating at scale," said David Wanek of WTI. "Their unique technology has the potential to have a real and significant impact on the global fuels and chemicals market. WTI is excited to be joining LanzaTech on its journey to commercialization and we look forward to great things from them."

"We are delighted to partner with WTI to accelerate our growth," Holmgren said. "WTI has an outstanding reputation and this venture debt completes our current fundraising. We will continue to invest our capital in LanzaTech's research and development program and to accelerate the commercialization of our integrated fuels and chemicals platform."

LanzaTech lands $15m in new funding

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10838293

By Ben Chapman-Smith

9:15 AM Thursday Oct 4, 2012 

Biofuels developer LanzaTech has so far raised more than $100 million in capital. Photo / Greg Bowker

New Zealand biofuels developer LanzaTech is celebrating after securing another US$15 million (NZD$18.3m) in funding from a Silicon Valley investment firm.

LanzaTech announced today it had closed a debt financing deal with Western Technology Investment (WTI).

The money would be put towards accelerating the company's research and development programme, LanzaTech said in a statement.

In January, LanzaTech secured US$55.8 million in new capital from a combination of Malaysian funders, along with existing investors in the US, China, and New Zealand.

With its scientific base in Auckland, but headquartered in the US, the company developed technology which converted industrial waste gases into valuable chemicals including ethanol, used to make biofuel.

This $15 million in financing brought LanzaTech's total capital raised to date to more than US$100 million.

WTI investment partner David Wanek said LanzaTech's team had developed an innovative approach to carbon capture and reuse that was already operating at scale.

"Its unique technology has the potential to have a real and significant impact on the global fuels and chemicals market," he said.

"WTI is excited to be joining LanzaTech on its journey to commercialisation and we look forward to great things from them."

LanzaTech chief executive Jennifer Holmgren said the company would continue investing capital in R&D and accelerating the commercialisation of its integrated fuels and chemicals platform.

LanzaTech was currently operating a pre-commercial facility in China using steel mill off-gases for ethanol production.

Full commercial operation was targeted for 2013.

WTI had provided more than US$3 billion of debt and equity capital to companies including Facebook and Google since it started in 1980.

SOCMA: US keen to tap into gas supply

http://www.icis.com/Articles/2012/10/01/9599041/socma-us-keen-to-tap-into-gas-supply.html

27 September 2012 10:53  [Source: ICB]

Some political leaders and many in manufacturing outside the chemical industry do not fully appreciate the huge potential of shale gas as a game changer for the US economy, according to an executive from the country's second largest natural gas producer, Chesapeake Energy Corporation.

"From the beginning of 2013 we'll start to see those dollars rolling in" Bill WinceVice president of business development, Chesapeake

According to Chesapeake, US gas resources are so vast that production could be doubled from current levels. However, this will only happen if gas prices return to levels that make gas drilling viable - somewhere in the $4-6/MMBtu range, substantially higher than the levels seen today.

At these prices, natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs) would still be a very attractive resource for the chemical industry and other industrial sectors, Chesapeake says.

Bill Wince, vice president of business development for Chesapeake, points out that the petrochemical industry uses natural gas for process energy and NGLs like ethane and propane as a feedstock. With such a comprehensive use of natural gas for its operations, the chemical industry benefits significantly from increased resource availability and ­modest prices.

He believes the chemical manufacturers that are adding NGL cracking capacity in the US have a great opportunity to capture value through exports.

"Though there are no restrictions on exporting raw NGLs, those who can process raw NGLs in the US have excellent opportunities to market their products in higher priced global markets," he adds.

Smaller and specialty chemical manufacturers will also have much more attractive input costs thanks to shale gas. "Our message is that you'll have a real advantage in the US and you need to be looking at ways to take ­advantage of that for domestic markets and for export."

The figures speak for themselves: following years of decline, industrial demand for gas has grown each year for the past three years as prices have fallen. "Those who can switch to gas have done so. But some of the fundamental shifts take time because they require new investments," says Wince.

Lower natural gas prices have generated significant new demand opportunities in the US, he says. The most immediate demand response has been in the power sector, as low gas prices have allowed gas-fired generation to displace coal.

Mothballed fertiliser plants have been brought back on stream, and methanol facilities have been debottlenecked. Over the longer term, he says, capacity additions from ammonia producers for fertilisers and urea, as well as methanol producers, will add significant new baseload industrial demand.

Wince says: "You begin to see some major projects under construction, so from a construction perspective the early-movers will have an advantage. From the beginning of 2013 we'll start to see those dollars rolling in."

Gas will also see increasing use in transportation: "People believe there has been a fundamental change in the relationship between petroleum prices and natural gas prices," he says. Truck engine manufacturers like Cummins and Westport are developing engines to burn liquefied natural gas (LNG), as are locomotive builders such as Caterpillar and GE.

VOLATILITY DECLINES

Investors like to make long-term decisions based on predictable conditions and, according to Wince, price volatility for natural gas and NGLs is already decreasing thanks to all the investment in infrastructure and increased supply.

He says: "In the past, price spikes were often weather-driven. We would ramp up rigs in response, but this would involve going out and finding the gas. Today, we've found the gas and future drilling will be driven by ­pricing signals - that has effectively dampened volatility."

In the past a lot of natural gas supply was offshore so it was subject to hurricane ­interruptions. Tight and shale gas is all onshore so the impact is much less pronounced. "Katrina was a huge event for pricing; we think shale insulates the US from that volatility," says Wince.

There has been a huge amount of investment in gas exploration and production in the US over the past few years, enabling producers to deliver gas in a much more flexible and reliable way, thereby cutting volatility.

"Our prices have traded down slowly over 3-4 years. But we had a very hot summer and difficult winters before this last one. These would have caused price spiking in the past but we had virtually none," he says.

Wince adds: "You can make investment decisions based on a presumption of lower volatility in gas markets. Investors should be confident that the long-term equilibrium price will be favourable versus alternative fuels and absolute prices ought to be more stable than in the past."

UNSUSTAINABLE PRICES

However, Chesapeake sounds a note of caution over current pricing. It believes a price of $4-6/MMBtu may be viable for producers and consumers in the intermediate term. With prices currently tanking below $3/MMBtu and below $4/MMBtu for the whole of this year, the number of gas rigs has fallen from 1,400 to 452 between 2008 and 2012.

Chesapeake is not planning to increase its number of gas rigs until it gets the right price signals. It has significantly curtailed capital expenditure investment in dry gas shale plays. Its budget has been adjusted so it spends more on oil and NGL exploration ­instead.

"We don't think the US can survive on incremental gas production from wet gas plays alone, whose higher value liquids make ­drilling economic at lower gas prices. Most dry gas plays don't become economic until prices are above $4/MMBtu. A lot of gas can be found at $6 and less, so $5 is a good midpoint," says Wince.

Chesapeake believes natural gas prices will self-correct in the long run and make exploration and production viable again. A record inventory of natural gas in storage in the US is now being worked off via coal-to-gas ­switching in the power sector, and that will continue through the end of this year, it says. Having bounced back from historic lows, they expect prices to increase late this year or early in 2013.

On the NGL side, Wince adds: "A lot of ethane crackers had gone into maintenance in the first half of 2012. Supply has been growing but part of the NGL price falls have been due to plant turnarounds this year. Nevertheless, supply growth will outpace demand until new crackers come online in the second half of this decade, so prices may remain ­modest."

Wince is confident that the $4-6/MMBtu natural gas price attractive to chemical producers can be sustained. He expects producers will return to dry gas plays in force when prices incentivise new drillings.

"The nominal price might increase because of inflation but adjusted should stay favourable versus all other fuel sources well beyond the next decade.

"Some in government and industry still don't recognise what an incredible resource we have and how we should leverage it. There are so many opportunities to underpin new jobs and real economic growth," says Wince.

As an independent oil and gas producer, Chesapeake is investing in research to boost the use of natural gas rather than conventional petroleum-based fuels in cars and heavy vehicles. It is also trying to encourage utilities to increase gas usage.

The company has also taken a 50% stake in biofuels group Sundrop Fuels, which uses natural gas and biomass to create transportation fuels. Wince adds: "The shale gas revolution is expanding to include more than just shale gas. Technology is being used in older oil and gas zones, which we call non-conventional or tight zones."

The new zones have become extremely important over the last 2-3 years, he says. "We've seen shale and associated drilling begin to focus away from typical dry gas zones and rig counts are now increasing in areas like Eagleford and the wet gas portion of Marcellus. The economics for wet gas, oil and condensate drilling have become better as we've adapted drilling techniques used to develop the dry gas plays."

By: Will Beacham
+44 20 8652 3214

Answers for your biofuels questions: Coskata, LanzaTech, butanol

http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2012/08/05/answers-for-your-biofuels-questions-coskata-lanzatech-butanol/

Jim Lane | August 5, 2012 

 

Here in Digestville, we debut this week a content collaboration with Consumer Energy Report, a must-see content site that we recommend you check out and bookmark. Twice a month, we’ll check in with CER and excerpt their latest and greatest – including contributions from CER and Energy Trends editor and noted biofuels commentator Robert Rapier.
In our first collaborative, RR answers some questions from readers. One is on Lanzatech, and the other is about the feasibility  of filtering for butanol separations. The questions were slightly edited for brevity.

Q. I am interested if the decision by Coskata shall flow on to Lanzatech and their purchase of Range Fuels in regards to ethanol?

We are currently developing a project that incorporates a number of pieces, however we are considering the use of natural gas as a dual feedstock to produce critical volume likely producing methanol as a fuel and chemical base. Our view is to follow the lead by China and to develop technologies and processes around methanol to fuel. Currently we are are undertaking research and developing a possible business model.

Do you think we are going to see a vhs (ethanol) vs beta (methanol) situation develop in the future?

RR answers: Lanzatech has technology that was close to Coskata’s technology, so this is certainly a good question. In my opinion, Lanzatech is going to have a tough time making cost-competitive ethanol for many of the same reasons that caused Coskata to shift to natural gas. If you don’t want to make a full commitment to natural gas, I think a low-risk approach (but probably higher capital) is the one you describe in which you would have a capability of feeding natural gas into the process.

Natural gas should work fine in Lanzatech’s process, and would certainly be a lower capital option than wood waste. I know they would ideally like to process waste streams that contain a lot of carbon monoxide, but they are going to need the capability of building greenfield plants that provide their own feedstock. Natural gas could be a path forward.

As far as ethanol versus methanol, in my view methanol and di-methyl-ether (DME) produced from methanol are likely to gain a stronger foothold in China before they do so in the U.S. The U.S. agricultural lobby has not looked favorably upon methanol in the U.S., and I believe they will fight hard to keep it out of the fuel supply and protect ethanol’s market share. After all, there is already a large supply of cheap methanol in the U.S. and approximately none of it ends up in the fuel supply. I don’t expect that situation to change soon, but if you are thinking about China as a target market then your chances may be better there.

Q: This may be a dumb question (chemistry is not my area), but has anyone looked at simply filtering the butanol from the water?  What are the relative molecular sizes?

RR answers: This particular issue is in reference to the energy-intensity of separating a solution containing low levels of butanol. For reference, I have written in some detail about this issue in Butanol 101 .

It’s not a dumb question; in fact membranes can be used to separate butanol from water. The membranes I am familiar with don’t work on the basis of size differences (although some gas membranes do) but rather the relative polarity of butanol and water. Since butanol is a less polar molecule than water, some membranes such as polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) that present a hydrophobic surface allow butanol to migrate into the membrane while excluding water.

This sort of separation can allow low-concentration butanol that is generally produced from biological processes (perhaps 2% to 6% butanol) to concentrate up to above the phasing concentration (~8% for n-butanol). Once the phasing concentration is reached, the energy requirements are far lower because the mixture separates into a butanol-rich phase containing maybe 20% water and a water-rich phase containing about 8% butanol. Therefore, instead of distilling off a mixture of 95% water and 5% butanol — which is extremely energy-intensive — you would distill a mixture that contains only 20% water.

The disadvantage is that the total costs of operating a membrane system are still not cheap. Chemical companies that produce billions of gallons of butanol each year are well aware of such systems, and have taken a look at the economics many times. But a fundamental difference between the petrochemical process and the biological process is that the former does not have to remove copious amounts of water as is the case in the latter. Therefore, the economics may be more compelling to utilize membranes for those pursuing the biological route.

Second Try: LanzaTech Grabs Failed Biofuel Refinery in Georgia Pine

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2012/01/12019-range-lanzatech-cellulosic-biofuel-ethanol/

Range Fuels attracted millions of dollars from private investors and both the Bush and Obama administrations before the failure of its Soperton, Georgia advanced biofuel plant. New Zealand's LanzaTech aims to coax success out of the plant with a different technology.

Photograph courtesy LanzaTech

Josie Garthwaite

For National Geographic News

Published January 19, 2012

The sandy soils of central Georgia nurture growth of bunchy wiregrass and longleaf pine. Here between the blackwater Ohoopee and Oconee rivers, about 160 miles (260 kilometers) southeast of Atlanta, a fortune has been sunk in hope of converting the abundant local biomass into fuel.

One of the more spectacular failures in the renewable energy industry—the Range Fuels collapse—played out here. Less renowned than the bankruptcy of Solyndra last September, Range’s failure that same month similarly involved the loss of millions of dollars in U.S. government funds and private investment, all wagered on an innovation that promised to propel an old technology to an exciting new level.

But where bankruptcy seems to have spelled the end for Solyndra and that California solar company’s technology, a new chapter is now being written in the effort to brew advanced biofuel in the “Million Pines City” of Soperton, Georgia.

Earlier this month, a New Zealand-based carbon-capture and energy startup called LanzaTech bought Range Fuels’ idle biorefinery in a foreclosure auction for just $5.1 million. That’s a bargain basement price, considering the money that Range Fuels had attracted from private investors and from both the Bush and Obama administrations for its cellulosic ethanol plant here: more than $160 million in venture capital, a $76 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2007, a $6.25 million grant from Georgia in 2008, and an $80 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2009.

LanzaTech says it has a business plan and technology that can coax success out of the Range Fuels plant. And one of the primary backers of LanzaTech’s efforts here is the same venture capitalist who helped bankroll and promote Range, technology investor Vinod Khosla. It’s now up to LanzaTech to see if it can turn the promise of Soperton into a real success for advanced biofuels and investors like Khosla.

High Hopes for Cellulosic

Producing ethanol from cellulosic plant sources has been seen as the Holy Grail of the renewable fuel industry. The U.S. corn belt may have perfected the art of fermenting its crop to produce fuel alcohol, but controversy abounds over the water use, the energy input for cultivating corn, and the limits and long-term viability of turning an edible product into fuel. That’s why President George Bush, in his 2006 State of the Union address, pledged to fund research to commercialize ethanol from non-edible plant material by 2012. Cellulosic ethanol companies also were in the first wave of alternative energy technologies backed by President Obama.

Although cellulosic ethanol can be produced in the laboratory and at pilot scale, the genetically engineered enzymes or heat needed to break down the plant material into sugars is expensive. Not a single company has succeeded in scaling up commercial cellulosic ethanol production in the United States six years after President Bush’s vow.

Oil companies in fact were fined $6.8 million in 2011 for failure to meet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s requirement that 6.6 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol be blended into gasoline and diesel last year. Indeed, that target marked a dramatic scaling back of the goal Congress set in 2007. Lawmakers originally envisioned that 250 million gallons of cellulosic biofuel would be helping to fuel U.S. vehicles by 2011. Although that goal proved overly ambitious (in part because Range Fuels failed to meet production estimates), it would have displaced only a small fraction of oil dependence in a nation that burned 8.8 million barrels, or 370 million gallons, of motor gasoline per day in 2011, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

If things had gone as planned when Congress was setting cellulosic ethanol goals, a large volume of that advanced biofuel would have been produced in Soperton, the only incorporated town in Treutlen County, Georgia.

Range Fuels (formerly called Kergy, Inc.), of Broomfield, Colorado, set out to establish a biorefinery here that would produce 100 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year. There would be plenty of feedstock in the “Million Pines City," named after a local plantation where, in the late 1920s, a cotton farmer pioneered the cultivation of pine trees as a crop. Today, pine tree plantations dominate the landscape, and forestry makes up some 80 percent of all land use.

Range had a two-step process. First, it would use heat, pressure, and steam to produce synthetic gas from biomass. Step two would be converting the gas to ethanol using chemical catalysts.

Construction began in an industrial park here in November 2007, but by 2009 Range Fuels had fallen behind and dramatically reined in production goals. In August 2010, the company squeezed out its first batch of methanol, a wood alcohol fuel used in racing and some industrial applications. (Range Fuels said at the time that its methanol would be used to produce biodiesel.) But the facility ran into technical problems with the gasifiers and the system for feeding in biomass, and it never did produce any cellulosic ethanol that would substitute for the corn ethanol now used in cars and trucks.

Range Fuels closed the plant in January 2010, and filed for bankruptcy in September 2011. At the time of its failure, it had received only half of its expected federal grant and loan guarantee monies, amounting to a loss of more than $85 million in public funds. The USDA required the foreclosure sale this month to recoup some of its losses. “LanzaTech is just looking to capitalize on a bargain, really,” said Andrew Soare, an alternative fuels analyst with the research firm Lux Research.

The fact that Range Fuels and LanzaTech share a lead investor—Vinod Khosla’s Khosla Ventures—has raised eyebrows because LanzaTech bought the Soperton site for a fraction of the amount spent developing the facility. And both companies have talked about big dreams for the site. 

“Right now the equipment is sized on the order of 4 million gallons,” LanzaTech CEO Jennifer Holmgren said in an interview. “But, you know, some day I’d like to build bigger units there. It’s a lot of land. It’s a lot of wood residue. That site’s really not meant for a little facility. I can imagine making 100 million gallons of fuel there,” perhaps within five years.

A New Approach

However, the companies differ when it comes down to the process for transforming the biomass of Treutlen County, bordered by the Ohoopee and Oconee rivers, two tributaries of the mighty Altamaha. LanzaTech, which has named the old Range Fuels site Freedom Pines Biorefinery, plans to use a gasifier to produce synthetic gas from biomass. That much is the same. But while Range Fuels planned to use chemical catalysts for the next step, LanzaTech’s technology uses microbes (specialized through genetic modification and arrested evolution) to ferment the syngas.

At Freedom Pines, LanzaTech intends to initially produce chemicals such as butanol and propanol, rather than ethanol, which sells in high volume but is a product that results in a relatively low profit margin, Soare said. This is new ground for LanzaTech. Since its founding in 2005, LanzaTech has concentrated its efforts mainly on capturing carbon monoxide from industrial flues, and using its proprietary microbes to convert the gas into ethanol fuel.

“Our organism gets carbon and energy from a carbon monoxide molecule,” Holmgren said. “One of the best places to find carbon monoxide is in steel mills,” where the gas would normally be flared and released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. And one of the best places to find steel mills, she added, is China, which produces about half the world’s steel.

In Shanghai, LanzaTech recently started up a 100,000-gallon-per-year demo with Bao Steel. Speaking in a phone call from New Zealand, where 50 of LanzaTech’s 85 employees are based, Holmgren said LanzaTech’s first commercial facility would most likely be in China, with construction beginning as early as next year. LanzaTech also has industrial partners in India, where it’s using municipal solid waste as a feedstock. And in partnership with Virgin Atlantic, Swedish Biofuels, Boeing, and others, LanzaTech has also begun developing a renewable jet fuel using its microbe-based carbon-capture system.

LanzaTech’s acquisition of the Soperton facility will give the company a new measure of independence, according to Holmgren. “Imagine our situation,” she said. “We’re very excited about our work in the chemicals area, but the demos and commercial facilities are controlled by partners. And so we would have to ask them for permission. We would have to come to an agreement,” to begin proving LanzaTech's technology for biochemical production at any significant scale. “Why would somebody operating this big ethanol plant care about us showing our technology or doing all the process that’s required to deliver a chemicals play, right? We feel that as a company, we need to have the ability to control the larger asset.”

It’s a Gas

At the Freedom Pines Biorefinery, LanzaTech will be tackling a whole new process: the gasification step, which was such a headache for Range Fuels. Through its steel mill partners, Soare said, LanzaTech has “access to free feedstock. So it’s surprising to see them go after this. But in the context of how cheap it was, it did make sense.”

LanzaTech plans to try fixing the Range Fuels gasifier. If that fails, Holmgren said, LanzaTech will bring in a new gasifier from a partner. As Soare put it, “They’re not a gasification company. If they can’t get the gasifier to work, they’ll move on.” Soare expects that LanzaTech will spend no more than a few million dollars working on the old gasifier.

Either way, moving into chemicals production strikes Soare as a shrewd strategy that could position LanzaTech for some lucrative deals down the road. “Syngas to ethanol is a very challenging step,” he said. About a dozen companies are working on syngas to ethanol globally, and a few dozen are working on cellulosic ethanol generally. “If gasification companies are unsuccessful, like Range, and if LanzaTech shows its organism works, there could be licensing or acquisition opportunities. Competitors will likely look to LanzaTech to help them switch to chemical production if LanzaTech can demonstrate its technology works at the Soperton plant.”

As for the U.S. government’s hopes for cellulosic ethanol to enter the fuel market this year, the EPA’s analysis is that there are six U.S. companies—each with a differing technology—that could produce the advanced biofuel in 2012. Therefore, the EPA set a goal of blending 8.65 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol into motor fuel this year, over objections from the oil industry that technology wasn’t available for producing that volume. The EPA said the goal was important to ensure a viable market for cellulosic ethanol, and the growth of the industry as Congress intended.

At this point, not a drop is expected to come from Range Fuels’ former biorefinery, which the EPA had projected would contribute 1 million gallons of cellulosic fuel to the U.S. energy mix in 2011. The agency is counting on no fuel production at Soperton in 2012.

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.

Qteros and UMass Amherst Bolster Patent Portfolio for Ethanol-Producing Microbe With Issued and Allowed Patents in the United States and Japan

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/qteros-and-umass-amherst-bolster-patent-portfolio-for-ethanol-producing-microbe-with-issued-and-allowed-patents-in-the-united-states-and-japan-124586773.html

June 27, 2011

MARLBOROUGH, Mass., June 27, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Qteros, Inc., the developer of a unique and highly efficient Consolidated Bioprocessing (CBP) platform for the lowest-cost production of cellulosic ethanol, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, today announced two significant intellectual property (IP) advances that extend the patent estate for their unique ethanol-producing microorganism, Clostridium phytofermentans, also known as the Q Microbe®.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office issued US Patent 7,943,363 B2 covering genetic constructs of Clostridium phytofermentans. This patent is significant as it provides intellectual property protection for genomic development and the use of gene combinations in Clostridium phytofermentans and other microorganisms to enhance an organism's innate ability to hydrolyze biomass and improve the efficiency and yield of ethanol produced by an organism.

In a second but related advance, the Japanese Patent and Trademark Office allowed a patent titled, "Systems and Methods for Producing Biofuels and Related Materials."  The patent describes the novel creation of products through the fermentation of biomass by Clostridium phytofermentans. Patent allowance in Japan represents significant progress towards the broad, global protection of Clostridium phytofermentans bioprocessing outside of the United States. A patent has already been issued for this technology in the U.S.

Both patents are based on the discovery of Clostridium phytofermentans by microbiologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Qteros is the exclusive licensee of the patent.

John A. McCarthy, Jr., Qteros' President and Chief Executive Officer, stated, "Each of these key patent achievements expands and further bolsters Qteros' already strong IP portfolio and represents the latest successes in our proactive and aggressive intellectual property strategy. Combined with the broad protection enabled by Qteros' current patent estate, these patents reinforce the uniqueness and the potential of our biological platform and enable Qteros to achieve an important milestone as we and our partners rapidly progress towards commercialization of our platform to produce lowest cost cellulosic ethanol at commercial scale."

Qteros' CBP Platform: Enabling Lowest Cost Production of Cellulosic Ethanol

The uniqueness of Qteros' CBP platform is centered on the Company's proprietary microorganism, the Q Microbe® (Clostridium phytofermentans) - a naturally occurring "biorefinery" that produces virtually all enzymes required for biomass degradation into pentose and hexose sugars, while simultaneously co-fermenting all these sugars into ethanol as its natural metabolic end product. The organism's innate biological ability to produce ethanol from biomass enables Qteros to focus its development efforts on optimizing the organism's effectiveness for industrial-scale production. This highly streamlined engineering solution therefore results in significantly lower operating and capital costs of production for producers versus other competitive technology solutions. Moreover, the Q Microbe® is feedstock flexible, producing high yields of cellulosic ethanol from a broad range of non-food biomass materials, including, among others, sugarcane bagasse, corn stover and cobs, and a broad variety of energy crops.

About Qteros, Inc.

Qteros' mission is to accelerate the global commercialization of large-scale, lowest-cost cellulosic ethanol production. Qteros has teamed with a core group of world-class strategic partners that complement and leverage our advanced microbiology and process engineering expertise. Working closely with its strategic partners, Qteros expects to rapidly scale its highly efficient, lowest-cost Consolidated Bioprocessing (CBP) platform for converting non-food biomass into biofuels. Qteros is funded by leading investors in the alternative energy industry including, among others, Venrock Associates, Battery Ventures, BP AE Ventures, Soros Fund Management LLC, and Valero Energy Corporation. For more information, please visit www.qteros.com.

About The University of Massachusetts

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is one of the nation's pre-eminent public research universities. More than 24,000 students from all 50 states and over 70 countries attend the university. Home to New England's premier honors college, UMass Amherst has more than 85 undergraduate majors, 68 master's and 48 doctoral degree programs– many the top programs in the nation and world. The faculty, dedicated teachers and world-renowned, recently received a record breaking $170 million in sponsored research. The student body is the most academically competitive in its history, and participates in over 240 co-curricular organizations. A recent facilities renaissance includes new buildings in the sciences, the arts, and recreation.