Fast-moving New Zealand bio-technology and chemical engineering company LanzaTech has added another notch to its belt, signing the world’s third largest steelmaker, South Korea’s Posco, to try out its trail-blazing process for turning toxic and greenhouse gases into bio-fuels.
This comes as LanzaTech signals its intention to undertake a major public capital-raising, most likely in Chinese equity markets, within the next two to three years, in an important step towards its vision of becoming a billion-dollar company within the next seven to 10 years.
The Auckland company’s chief scientific officer, Sean Simpson, confirmed that LanzaTech has begun developing a variant of its unique carbon monoxide-eating microbe that would feed on the world’s most common greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.
“That’s the holy grail,” he said.
Posco is the third major Asian industrial partner for LanzaTech since the company signed its first collaboration deal for its heavily patented gas fermentation technology.
Oil and steel producers are aiming to use the the LanzaTech microbe to convert gases from their manufacturing processes, which would otherwise be waste pollutants, into a range of bio-fuels, polymers and other high-value chemicals. The LanzaTech discovery is exciting serious Chinese and United States interest because it can produce high quality bio-fuels without using food such as corn as a bio-mass feedstock.
The New Zealand company had the rare experience of being cited in a White House press statement during last month’s summit in Washington between US president Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao.
Posco, a conglomerate that pioneered steel-making at the beginning of South Korea’s industrialisation push in the 1960s, produced 33.7 million tons of steel last year. It has already committed itself to new steel-making technologies that radically reduce carbon emissions by avoiding the traditional blast-furnace smelting method.
“Posco’s environmentally conscious policies are consistent with LanzaTech’s technology vision of reducing the carbon footprint while increasing energy efficiencies at industrial facilities,” said LanzaTech’s chief executive, Jennifer Holmgren.
“The proposed licensing by Posco of our patented microbe and fermentation process fits with our growth strategy in Asia.”
Dr Simpson said the company was now working on the selection process to find an equivalent microbe to its main discovery, which makes use of carbon monoxide, which would be capable of converting carbon dioxide to useful new products.
Such a process could provide a globally important step forward in efforts to capture, store, or minimise the impact of carbon dioxide emissions.
“We’re talking about fixing carbon in everyday items,” said Dr Simpson.
“The potential is extremely significant.”
LanzaTech has investment from Warehouse founder Sir Stephen Tindall’s K1W1 venture capital fund, one of Silicon Valley’s leading clean technology investors, Khosla Ventures, and Qiming Ventures in China, as well as funding from the New Zealand and US governments.
