50 Billion gallons of ethanol, from carbon monoxide, from world's steel producers: LanzaTech

[JohnWxy]

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/04/a_new_zealand_c.html">Lanza Tech Bacteria Produce Ethanol from Carbon Monoxide

"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."


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.

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http://www.lanzatech.co.nz/?t=16

The clear advantage of this approach to capturing the energy in biomass is that through gasification over 90% of the energy is made available for fermentation whereas more conventional technologies (for instance cellulose fermentation), may only access the carbohydrate portion of the biomass.

[Omaha Steve]

1. K&R!

[chill_wind]

2. K & R. n/t

[madokie]

3. Our coal power plants should be using the gasifier process in making our electricity

and this would only add to the value of the coal. I know we need to get off coal but for now we are going to have to continue to use coal so I say we need to convert our coal plants to the gasifier rather than the direct burn most use today. All the infrastructure is already there all we need to do is change the way we convert the coal to electric energy.

[FBI_Un_Sub]

4. K&R with pleasure

[madokie]

5. What gets me is when I bring up this very fact

that by converting our existing coal power plants to gasifiers would cut the CO2 produced by each of these plants by a good 50% all I hear here is how out of tune with reality I am for even suggesting such a thing. Its as if the coal industry had many here in their pockets. All I get in response is how it can't be done which just blows me away because it is something that is very possible to do. All the infrastructure is already there, all the equipment is already there just change the way the coal is converted to power. Its as if some think that to use a gasifier you have to sequester the CO2 which is not true. One is not dependent on the other. Some thinks that just because we have no viable way to sequester the CO2 makes the whole idea bogus. Shaking head here at the ignorance of it all.
:hi:

[kristopher]

7. What part of the issue is hard to get?

Money spent to convert coal plants is money NOT spent on completely clean sources of energy. The cost of a NEW plant that is designed around the use of gasification technology is extremely high - far higher than renewables.

Just because you have some of the components in place doesn't mean you can achieve savings with retrofits. Do you have any reason to think that retrofitting old coal plants is cost effective compared to new renewable generation? You are talking about a redesign of the heart of large, very expensive facilities and when you are done, they are STILL going to be emitting huge quantities of CO2.

I know you have a soft spot for the idea, but it isn't a conspiracy that causes the costs and benefits to work out poorly.

[madokie]

8. As I was saying

Renewables such as? What is going to replace our coal plants today in providing base load, nothing but nuclear or gas. Gas is basically the same as using a gasifier in our coal plants that we already have that would clean them up considerably. What would be the quickest way to make a big dent in the co2 we put into our atmosphere today? We have the infrastructure already and we have the equipment already in place except that one facet, the burn chamber. Nuclear is out of the question as it is neither cheap nor clean and only short sighted people would even suggest it.
I'm not interested in having a cyberspace argument with you. If you are interested in exploring the idea then I'm all ears, eyes whichever the case may be. Otherwise forget it. :hi:
I'm not advocating non renewable I'm simply stating we can clean up what we already use to help in buying time while we get the renewables in place. Don't even try to tell me that retrofitting to using a gasifier burn chamber of an existing coal plant would cost more or take longer than building a new plant from scratch.
I'd like to see us get away from coal completely but that is not going to happen overnight so in the mean time we can make what we already have better and less polluting.


Have a great day, I know I plan too

[kristopher]

9. Your understanding of need for "baseload" is not accurate.

"Baseload" power is a by-product of the present centralized thermal generating structure; it isn't a necessary part of delivering power to users in a grid structured around distributed, renewable energy sources.

As for exploring the idea; based on your enthusiasm for the technology I have already spent a fair amount of time looking at it and you are seriously underestimating the complexity and costs of retrofitting. Add to that the fact that your comparison to natural gas misses the point that we have a huge underutilized existing natural gas generating infrastructure; so the number to compare the retrofitting cost to is largely zero.

These types of misunderstandings are important to get past if we are going to actually do something about energy instead of just dancing to the "business as usual" waltz that the fossil fuel lobbies keep playing about renewables.

[kristopher]

6. This is a second order technology - validity depends on the source of the CO.

For example, how much CO is produced by an electric furnace powered by renewables?

We need to abandon combustion of fossil fuels. Any technology that depends on fossil fuel combustion is a poor choice for our future energy infrastructure.

[joshcryer]

10. It appears that the CO comes from the purifying process itself.

They blow oxygen through carbon rich pig iron and it combines to form carbon monoxide. This is a valid use of technology, but it may not reduce CO2 emissions as a whole, because the ethanol when combusted will release it.