Decarbonisation Technology - August 2024 Issue

LanzaTech’s proprietary process

Ability to leverage diverse carbon sources

Bioreactor

Primary product ethanol

Fuels

Clean - up

Atmospheric CO

Industrial o-gas

Co - product protein

Separation

Materials

Compression

Gasied solid waste

Carbon - rich waste gases enter compressor. Solids must rst be gasied. LanzaTech process occurs within proprietary bioreactor; microbe consumes carbon in gas and produces ethanol and protein co - product.

Ethanol is an intermediate product that can be further upgraded and converted into high - value sustainable materials and fuels. Cir c ularity-enabled with solid waste carbon gasied and emitted carbon captured and returned to the process.

Figure 1 LanzaTech’s novel circular solution, recycling waste carbon into valuable products

Reimagining the carbon economy To protect life on Earth, it is necessary to rethink this extractive carbon economy and transition toward a circular model. Instead of taking virgin fossil carbon from the ground, the gigatons of carbon already in the atmosphere can be captured and reused to create sustainable products. This is where CCU comes into play, representing a pivotal shift in how carbon emissions are handled. Companies like LanzaTech are pioneering this effort with technologies designed to capture industrial waste carbon at its source, preventing it from entering the atmosphere. CCU has the potential to enable circular economies from aggregated waste streams such as waste biomass, municipal solid waste, industrial off-gases, and biogases (landfills and livestock CH 4 ). Carbon recycling technologies can transform above-ground carbon sources into sustainable fuel and chemical products. These technologies offer an industrial approach to both enable fuel and chemical manufacturing at its current scale and achieve sustainability targets. Gas fermentation – using carbon-fixing micro- organisms – is a fully commercial carbon recycling process technology that transforms waste carbon resources into sustainable fuels, chemicals, and polymers at a scale that can be

truly impactful in mitigating the climate crisis. LanzaTech has successfully scaled up the gas fermentation process from the laboratory bench to full commercial scale, with several commercial plants in operation and additional facilities in the pipeline. CCU technologies can transform carbon into more sustainable chemical building blocks, like ethanol, which can be used in everyday products that traditionally rely on virgin fossil carbon. This approach not only mitigates new CO₂ emissions but also attempts to utilise the carbon already in the atmosphere. Gigatonne challenge Consider the scale of the challenge: globally, each year, industries release more than 37 billion tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere. One billion tonnes is equivalent to 1 gigatonne, so in just the last five years, humanity has produced more than 185 gigatonnes of CO 2 . Despite the potential of these technologies, they are only scratching the surface. Similarly scaled solutions are needed to tackle the gigatonne-scale challenge of carbon emissions. This effort requires collaboration across consumers, industries, and governments to foster systemic change. To fully utilise CO 2, an energy source is needed, and for a fully sustainable solution, sustainably