Lanza Tech Bacteria Produce Ethanol from Carbon Monoxide

A New Zealand company, LanzaTech, based in Auckland, announced that it had developed a fermentation process in which bacteria consume carbon monoxide and produce ethanol. Khosla Ventures has invested $3.5 million in the company to establish a pilot plant and perform the engineering work to prepare for commercial-scale ethanol production.

LanzaTech's innovation lies in using a bacterium to produce ethanol not from a carbohydrate, but from a gas, carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is a waste product of a number of industrial processes, including the production of steel.

This technology could produce 50 billion gallons of ethanol from the world's steel mills alone, turning the liability of carbon emissions into valuable fuels worth over $50 billion per year at very low costs and adding substantial value to the steel industry. The technology will also be a key contributor to the cellulosic biofuels business as it can convert syngas produced through gasification into ethanol.

"We have proven in our laboratories that the carbon monoxide in industrial waste gases such as those generated during steel manufacture can be processed by bacterial fermentation to produce ethanol. Garnering the financial and strategic support of Khosla Ventures is a significant validation of our approach, and we welcome Khosla Ventures Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Doug Cameron, to our Board of Directors," said Dr. Sean Simpson, Chief Scientist and Founder of LanzaTech.

Their bacterium is described as seven nongenetically modified, non-pathogenic bacteria, isolated from natural environments that produce novel bioproducts via small scale fermentation.

LanzaTech New Zealand Ltd. is a privately held company, founded in 2005, whose mission is to enable industries that produce high volumes of carbon monoxide containing flue gases to become the lowest cost, highest volume producers of fuel ethanol.

Comments

[Al Fin]

Chemicals are building blocks. If we learn to put them together the way we wish, we could make diamondoid nanoassemblers from atmosheric CO2.

[sarcasm]
This process does not seem natural. I am not certain that Gaia would approve. Does anyone care to ask Sheryl Crowe about that?[/sarcasm]
;-)

[GreyFlcn]

You mean they found that single cell organisms can grow using carbon dioxide?

Last I checked, we called those Algae.

[Paul Dietz]

You mean they found that single cell organisms can grow using carbon dioxide?

These grow from carbon monoxide, not CO2, and no light is needed; the energy driving their metabolism comes from the free energy of the input chemicals. On pure CO, as far as I can tell, about 2/3 of the carbon turns into CO2, the rest into fuels and cell material. You'd want to recycle some of the CO2 back to the biomass (or whatever) gasifier to get a more CO-rich syngas.

One issue with systems like this, I imagine, would be mass transfer. Does enough CO dissolve in the solution to make the reactor small enough to be practical? Can you add things to the solution to increase the solubility of CO (metal ions it could form complexes with, say)?

[Beek]

Al Fin, this process is not natural enough. If it uses sunlight, then it is creating unnatural shade and reducing vegetation growth. If the structure is more than 3 meters tall, then birds and bats are going to hit it and die. If it uses water, then there is a chance for the compressor to leak oil (dont our cars all leak oil?) and the oil getting into the ground water.

Society should get cheap renewable green energy, cause its entitled to it. But this process is simply environmentally unacceptable and is designed to enrich the new colonialists and Halliburton.

[Ross]

Beek, please be silent while the adults are talking.

[Engineer-Poet]

This sounds a lot like the Clostridium fermentation process which was in the news a little while ago.

The issue I can see is that only a small amount of the carbon monoxide actually winds up as ethanol, and the remaining CO is itself but a fraction of the original carbon.  Capturing all of it with something like Greenfuel's process would be much better.

[Beek]

Ross, I am just relaying stuff I read on The Oil Drum website (den of Peak Oil truthers and post-colonials). Go register your complaint over there.

[Engineer-Poet]

Beek, if you won't take responsibility for what you post, don't post it.

[Beek]

EP, my sarcastic remarks are a reflection of some of the idiotic things I read at TheOilDrum by its commentators. Surely I can relay other views. Even here, we have had at least one commentator complain that solar thermal is not EC (environmentally correct), cause it creates shade.

So what's your complaint? - lets not make rules out of thin air - that's the job of the Clostridium to make stuff out of thin air!

[Doug]

The only problem with greenfuel's process is that it will never be remotely economically feasible; and, even if it were, there is nothing unique or proprietary about their process and the people running the company have no clue what they are doing.

[Engineer-Poet]

No matter how sarcastic you are on a blog, somebody somewhere is going to take you at your word.

Even if you use <sarcasm> tags.  Here's a dollar, buy a clue.

[Doug]

I found beek's comment hysterical, and if you couldn't catch the obvious sarcasm, you're probably not smart enough to realize that greenfuel is a sham either

[Will]

This is not a 'renewable process' so long as the CO is created by burning fossil fuels. It may make that once-stored carbon go further, which while we insist on using it must be a good thing. But we shouldn't get ourselves too excited about it!

[Reality Czech]

Beek's transgression wasn't the sarcasm, it was the reference to unnamed persons on another blog.

[ESoyke]

The "unnatural shade" argument sounds as funny as the line on the Simpsons from a PETA member who stated he was a "Level-5 vegan": he didn't eat anything that cast a shadow.

This tech sounds like another interesting one to watch over the next couple years.

[Ross]

Beek, I didn't think you were serious. I figured you were a troll, so I posted an anti-troll response.

Doug, I don't quite get why the Greenfuel "oil from algae grown at the powerplant exhause" model is a sham... They'll need additional nutrients that won't be provided by the smokestack output, but the ability of the system to recycle (instead of sequestering) CO2 makes a lot of sense.

If I'm missing something fundamental as to why it can't possibly work, please enlighten me. I'd really like to learn.

[John F.]

This is not a 'renewable process' so long as the CO is created by burning fossil fuels. It may make that once-stored carbon go further, which while we insist on using it must be a good thing.

I agree. I wouldn't poo-poo the value of wringing more energy out of those fossil fuels, because industrial CO waste isn't going to drop to zero anytime soon, even in the most aggressive and costly transition plan imaginable. In the meantime, anything that removes an industrial pollutant and turns it into profitable product that in turn results in less fossil fuel extraction sounds like a good idea to me. I wish these folks well.

How significant a portion of petroleum consumption would this be? I came up with a figure of 2.2% on a energy-equivalent basis, based on the following numbers (mind the units):

Energy in a barrel of oil: 5,800,000 BTU
World petroleum consumption (2004): 82.55 million barrels/day
Energy in a gallon of ethanol: 75,700 BTU
Potential ethanol production from world's steel mills: 50,000,000 gallons/year

[John F.]

Doug, I don't quite get why the Greenfuel "oil from algae grown at the powerplant exhause" model is a sham... If I'm missing something fundamental as to why it can't possibly work, please enlighten me. I'd really like to learn.

http://www.nanostring.net/Algae/CaseStudy.pdf

[Tom Prucha]

Lanza Tech should get together with these folks at U of C San Diego...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070418091932.htm

[Engineer-Poet]

The comparisons in Dmitrov's essay are way off.  For instance, he compares the per-square-meter revenue of a biodiesel operation with a greenhouse (for flowers, presumably); he thinks $2.50/m^2 is low.  Comparing with a cornfield instead, I get ~4000 m^2/acre and $600 gross from 150 bu/ac @$4.00/bu = 15¢/m^2 gross revenue.

[Beek]

Engineer-Poet: No matter how sarcastic you are on a blog, somebody somewhere is going to take you at your word. Even if you use tags. Here's a dollar, buy a clue.

If a reader cannot figure that "unnatural shade" is a wholly untenable concept that can only be believed by the perversely environmentally correct, then he/she deserves to remain in his/her self-delusion.

Reality Czech: Beek's transgression wasn't the sarcasm, it was the reference to unnamed persons on another blog.

And you are the self-appointed "transgression" police here - aren't you! In what school of political correctness did you learn such loaded words may I ask. And I will quote unnamed persons from other blogs, and I will label other blogs, to my heart's content, and its none of your friggin business - get it? Now you explain this "transgression" thingy you picked up somewhere along the way in what you thought was an education, hemaar.

[Paul Dietz]

Comparing with a cornfield instead, I get ~4000 m^2/acre and $600 gross from 150 bu/ac @$4.00/bu = 15¢/m^2 gross revenue.

So what? The capital requirements for a corn field are also far lower. You don't have to cover the cornfield with greenhouse-like bioreactors.

[Engineer-Poet]

You mean, tubes of plastic?  Greenfuel's design might be too costly, but that doesn't mean they all are.

[GreyFlcn]

re: Paul Dietz
--So what? The capital requirements for a corn field are also far lower. You don't have to cover the cornfield with greenhouse-like bioreactors.--

And what are the capital requirements, and operating costs for carbon capture and sequestration?

By comparison 'greenfuels' style sounds rather lucrative.

[Engineer-Poet]

I tried to calculate the cost of a Solix-style "tube bioreactor" from the price of poly sheeting made for greenhouses.  It was roughly breakeven at today's prices, but a carbon tax or oil tax would probably make it pay nicely.

[Earthnol]

BRI, Coskata and this LanzaTech all want to make ethanol from syngas by fermentation using Clostridia and other bacteria. Most people say this will be the main stream for ethanol production in the near future. What is the main challenge for this technology?

[Paul Dietz]

And what are the capital requirements, and operating costs for carbon capture and sequestration?

From flue gas? Probably much lower. There's no need to spread the CO2 over square kilometers of collecting area. The CC&S machinery will also continue to work at night or when it's overcast. If you propose storing CO2 at night for algae processing during the day, then, well, you're doing carbon capture in addition to growing algae.

[Henry Gibson]

Perhaps there is some confusion about the difference between carbon-monoxide(CO) and carbon-dioxide(CO2). Carbon-monoxide is a fuel that can be oxidised with air or oxygen to form carbon-dioxide. Carbon-monoxide retains about 75% of the energy of the pure carbon that it can be made from. Carbon-monoxide is produced in large quantities and is mostly used to extract Hydrogen from water for making fertilizers, but carbon-dioxide is produced in the process as well. Carbon-DIOXIDE has no net energy available in reference to either air or water. Organisms can only use it as a brick not a briquette. Plants make hydrogen out of water and light energy and use it to capture Carbon-Dioxide to form leaves and stems and sugars and starches etc. The waste product is Oxygen a toxic chemical that has caused the death of more organisms than any other. It has been the most potent and persistent of all antibiotics. Some organisms developed a resistance and survived. Others found it a way to get more energy from the available food; humans can do both. It is one of the first examples of toxic wastes that humans and other organisms have developed a use for after other organisms filled the atmosphere with it. Humans have not yet succeeded in developing a method for safely disposing of the toxic waste, oxygen, produced from other organisms on the earth.

But Carbon-monoxide is highly poisonous to many animals. There are micro-organisms that can also use carbon-monoxide as a source of energy, and they can produce other chemicals from it and water, like ethanol CH3CH2OH. The organism must use at least four CO molecules and two water molecules to make one ethanol plus two carbon-dioxide molecules. This can be done in the absence of solar energy in a sealed bottle; just as ethanol and carbon dioxide is formed from glucose.

Plants, and green plant like organisms can use carbon-dioxide and water to form glucose, but energy is needed from the sun to do this. It is too bad that organisms did not develop that took in sunlight, carbon dioxide and water and produced ethanol dripping from the leaves, but plants like humans like to save their energy for themselves for a future meal. Organisms that can get oxygen and sugar do not produce any ethanol, methane or other combustable materials. Even plants efficiently burn up stores of starches and sugars during the night. When organisms need to store up concentrated energy for future use, fats and oils are created.

Carbon-monoxide on the other hand has energy in it relative to water, so organisms in water can use it as an energy source. If fed carbon-monoxide and water plus other minor nutrients and nutrients required to produce amino-acids for growth, ammonia, sulfur, etc., the organisms can produce ethanol and carbon-dioxide forever. Many of the the same or similar organisms can also use hydrogen and Carbon-DIOXIDE to make ethanol. Anerobic organisms have adopted the "anything for a buck" rule only they say it "anything for a calorie".

Many tons of carbon-monoxide are produced in blast furnaces but it is almost completely burnt for other steel or iron making processes.

All solar energy comes from nuclear processes in the sun called fusion. The sun also sends enormous amounts of nuclear radiation to the earth. And it is so inefficient that the earth gets only 1/2,000,000,000 or 0.0000000005 parts of its total light. What is so clean about solar energy. All coal and oil and natural gas are are reminants of cellulose that organisms could not digest because there was no oxygen or all organisms were killed by chemicals or starvation. Sauerkraut anyone?

Ethanol made from coal is just as much cellulostic ethanol as is that made from grass.

Coal is little good for fertilizing soils, but all forms of cellulose can be mixed with soils and the energy derived from their digestion is often used to naturally form other fertilizing materials including nitrogen for growing plants....

The absolute lowest carbon-dioxide producing method of running a car is to charge a battery with energy from a nuclear power plant, and a coal fired power plant comes in third or fourth and may produce only one-fourth as much carbon-dioxide as burning gasoline in a car engine does.

HG....

[Kit P]

HG, you are correct. Nuclear fission and coal combustion are great ways to make produce heat to make electricity. Both can be stored in a form that is easy to store until needed.

All forms of storing electricity are expensive, inefficient, and environmentally ugly.

Using petroleum to fuel ICE in POV is a great form of transportation.

Furthermore , we are neither running out of fossil fuel nor experiencing abnormal climate change.

However, unless you calculated ghg emissions using ISO 14000 LCA methods, your answer is wrong. The correct answer is depends on where you live. Since France has excess off peak nuclear capacity, maybe EV may have a lower ghg result in France.