LanzaTech raises US$18M for waste gas conversion

LanzaTech raises US$18M for waste gas conversion technology

By Peter Kerr

July 13 (BusinessDesk) – LanzaTech, the Auckland-based company specialising in converting industrial waste gases into fuels and chemicals, obtained a second round of venture capital funding which will enable it to further commercialise its technologies.

China-focused venture capital firm Qiming Ventures and Softbank China Venture Capital are to invest US$18 million, joining two existing investors from the Series A round, U.S.- based Khosla Ventures and New Zealand-based K1W1. Since the 2007 Series A funding round, LanzaTech has proven its process, which uses proprietary bacteria as its conversion medium, using unconditioned ‘dirty’ gas streams directly from N.Z. Steel’s Glenbrook mill to make ethanol.

The financing follows LanzaTech’s signing with Baosteel, China’s largest steel and iron conglomerate, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) to commercialise its technologies for producing ethanol from steel mill waste gases. Non food resources such as industrial waste gas, syngas from biomass and reformed natural gas can become a resource for high volume fuels and plastics under LanzaTech’s process.

“The significance of its technology means that fuel can be produced with no impact on food supply or land use,” said Gary Rieschel, founder and managing director of Qiming. “Using industrial waste gases curbs GHG emissions and so maintains manufacturing sustainability in China.

Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla said “it is exciting how some imagination and creativity can take a wide variety of industrial off gases and pollution and efficiently turn it into high value biofuels and bio chemicals.”

LanzaTech co-founder Sean Simpson said the funding will enable the company to further accelerate its commercialisation process.

“We plan to have a pre-commercial plant operational in 2011, with plans to quickly scale to a commercial facility producing over 200 million litres of ethanol per year,” Simpson said. “The funding will also see expansion of the company’s focus to include the use of C02 as a feedstock gas.”

LanzaTech estimates that its bacteria-based technology could produce over 120 billion litres of ethanol per year using existing steel mill gases alone.

(BusinessDesk)

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