Chemical Engineering January 2020 - 24

JohnsonMatthey
Dow
Coating Head 2
Adhesive Component 2
Coating Head 1
Adhesive Component 1
FIGURE 2. A novel catalyst for the steam-reforming of methane developed by JohnsonMatthey
uses strips of alloy material folded and coated with catalyst material to
improve heat transfer and reduce pressure drop
Microbes capable of utilizing CO,
known as acetogens were first discovered
in 1903, but had not been exploited
in a commercial process prior
to LanzaTech's work. The company
was able to optimize the bacterium
Clostridium autoethanogenum to produce
ethanol at high selectivities from
a wide range of gas feedstocks. LanzaTech's
Gao says ethanol selectivities
as high as 95% can be achieved
stably while operating with feed gas
of fluctuating composition. " The ability
of the process to tolerate variable gas
feeds is critical for utilizing these offgas
and syngas feedstocks, " he says,
which can come from steel-making
and gasification of municipal solid
waste and biomass.
Aside from the microbe, another
development in the process
was LanzaTech's bioreactor, which
solves two unique challenges of gas
fermentation. First, the bioreactor
design enables high gas-to-liquid
mass transfer of CO and H2 at low
pressure, " a critical requirement to
enabling a cost-efficient high rate of
reaction despite the low solubility of
CO and H2 in aqueous solutions, "
LanzaTech says. And second, the
bioreactor is designed for concurrent
consumption of CO and H2.
LanzaTech and its industrial partners
had been working to scale-up
and commercialize the gas fermentation
process since 2005, resulting
in more than 100,000 hours of pilotand
demonstration-scale operating
data at five sites co-located at industrial
sites and operating on real industrial
gases and syngas, Gao says.
The pilot and demonstration experience
led to the May 2018 startup of
24
Nip Station
2 Components Adhesive
FIGURE 3. To allow for fast cure times in plastic laminate adhesives, the
Dow Symbiex technology keeps the adhesives apart begins the cure phase
only when the components of the laminate are joined
the first operating commercial gasfermentation
facility in the world: the
Shougang LanzaTech commercial
plant at the Jingtang Steel Mill in
Caofeidian, Hebei Province, China.
The commercial plant in China has
produced more than 10 million gallons
of ethanol since startup in 2018.
Ethanol from the plant is being used
as a transportation fuel, but is also
being converted into products, such
as high-density polyethylene (HDPE)
and ethylene glycol for use in the
manufacture of polyethylene terephthalate
(PET) plastic.
Plans are underway for the LanzaTech
process to be deployed at other
commercial sites, involving steel mill
off-gas, refinery off-gas, and biomass
and municipal solid waste syngas
feedstocks. " The next two commercial
plants in the pipeline are with Indian
Oil Corp. and ArcelorMittal, operating
on refinery off-gas and steel mill
off-gas respectively, with the intent to
construct further plants across their
operations, " says Gao.
LanzaTech is developing a number
of downstream conversion routes
for the use of the ethanol, including
conversion to jet fuel, HDPE and a
recently announced collaboration to
convert ethanol into ethylene glycol
for use in a high-tenacity yarn product,
Gao says.
Converting alcohol to jet fuel
LanzaTech recently announced progress
in scaling up its alcohol-to-jet
(ATJ) platform. The company entered
a partnership with the U.S Department
of Energy's Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory (PNNL; Richland,
Wash.; www.pnnl.gov) in which PNNL
developed a unique catalytic process
to upgrade ethanol to alcohol-to-jet
synthetic paraffinic kerosene (ATJSPK)
and LanzaTech scaled up the
process from laboratory to pilot scale.
After the April 2018 scaleup, ethanol
was added as an approved feedstock
in ASTM D7566 Annex A5
(Standard Specification for Aviation
Turbine Fuel Containing Synthesized
Hydrocarbons for ATJ-SPK), and in
October 2018, it was used to power a
commercial flight with Virgin Atlantic.
Now plans are underway to build
a demonstration-scale facility for the
jet fuel made ultimately from captured
exhaust. Michael Berube, DOE deputy
assistant secretary for transportation,
announced that DOE is negotiating
with LanzaTech for a $14 million
investment in a demonstration-scale
integrated biorefinery at LanzaTech's
Freedom Pines site in Soperton, Ga.
The PNNL/LanzaTech ATJ process
can use any source of sustainable
ethanol for jet fuel production,
including ethanol made from
recycled pollution. The flexibility of
the technology to utilize a variety of
local waste feedstocks attracted the
attention of Japan's All Nippon Airways
(ANA), resulting in an offtake
agreement with LanzaTech signed
in 2019, allowing ANA to purchase
sustainable aviation fuel from LanzaTech's
process.
Following this agreement, ANA,
Mitsui & Co. and JXTG Energy have
been selected by the New Energy
and Industrial Technology Development
Organization (NEDO; a Japanese
public research organization) to
conduct a feasibility study on scaling
the LanzaTech ATJ platform in
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM
JANUARY 2020
http://www.pnnl.gov http://WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM
Chemical Engineering January 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering January 2020
