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Butadiene (BD), the intermediate chemical used in synthetic rubber production, will soon find another upstream biological route through the cost-economic production of a chemical building block called 2,3 butanediol (2,3 BDO) being devel-oped by US-based industrial bio-technology firm LanzaTech.

LanzaTech aims to commer-cialize production of its 2,3 BDO using industrial waste gas carbon monoxide as feedstock by the end of 2014, LanzaTech CEO Jennifer Holmgren said in an interview with ICIS.

The 2,3 BDO would be pro-duced by fermenting carbon mon-oxide with LanzaTech’s proprietary microorganism to make ethanol and 2,3 BDO as co-products. The microorganism used is a bacterium in the clostridium family.

The technology would allow for the production of up to 50% of 2,3 BDO by volume and the rest in ethanol, said Holmgren.

LanzaTech has been producing CO-based 2,3 BDO at a 15,000 gal/year pilot facility in Glenbrook, New Zealand, at the site of local metals producer BlueScope Steel. In April, LanzaTech started operat-ing its 100,000 gal/year ethanol demonstration facility in Shanghai, China, using carbon monoxide from an adjacent steel mill owned by its partner Baosteel Group, Chi-na’s largest steel producer.

“A commercial ethanol/2,3 BDO production plant at a world-class steel mill would have capacity of 30m-50m gal/year,” Holmgren said. The plant would cost around $2.50/gal in ethanol equivalent, or

$75m–125m (€60m–100m), with the steel operator putting up the capital cost, she noted. LanzaTech first plans to have a commercial fuel ethanol plant in commission in China by the end of 2013.

“We are expecting our demon-stration plant with Baosteel to achieve its target productivity and process stability by the end of sum-mer,” said Holmgren. “After this we are ready to set up a commer-cial ethanol plant, which will take up to 18 months.

“It would be reasonable to have demonstrated our ability to pro-duce 2,3 BDO by the end of 2013, start commercializing in 2014, and by the end of 2014 achieve com-mercial production,” she added.

LanzaTech would license the technology and share profits or losses in the product sales.

The 2,3 BDO market is currently very limited because of the diffi-

culty of separating the intermediate into downstream derivatives such as BD, methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) and butenes, said Holmgren.

ECONOMIC SEPARATIONLanzaTech and its partner, US-based Orochem Technologies, believe they have a separation route that can economically con-vert LanzaTech’s carbon monox-ide-based 2,3 BDO into MEK or 1,3 butadiene using a thermocata-lytic process.

Holmgren said data from the Pacific Northwest National Labo-ratory (PNNL) as part of a US De-partment of Energy project show that the conversions are feasible. LanzaTech has been working with PNNL since late 2010 to optimize the conversion process.

2,3 BDO is currently available as a laboratory chemical and is being sold as a small-volume intermedi-ate for certain niche applications such as in food flavoring additives. In the past, 2,3 BDO was used as a feedstock to make butadiene for synthetic rubber, before it was abandoned in favor of a more cost-effective naphtha-based BD.

“We think we can separate and convert 2,3 BDO cheaply enough to justify using this as a bulk in-termediate,” said Holmgren. “We’ve done quite a bit of work and if we are right, since it’s our same organism and reactor, we could commercialize very, very quickly,” she added.

LanzaTech aims to ramp up CO-based ethanol production through several demonstration plants that are expected to start up this year.

As the Baosteel ethanol demon-stration plant in China is now up and running, the ethanol produced in the facility will be used internal-ly for its car fleet as well as for sam-ple demonstration to LanzaTech’s partners, said Holmgren.

LanzaTech expects another 100,000 gal/year fuel ethanol dem-onstration plant to start in Septem-ber 2012 in collaboration with steel producer Shougang Group. The ethanol facility is next to one of Shougang’s steel mills in China.

“If we use the steel industry’s CO emissions worldwide, it could pro-duce up to 30bn gal/year of etha-nol,” Holmgren said.

Holmgren sees steel mills as major sources of CO. They produce CO as an off-gas and either flare it off or use it to produce power.

ALTERNATIVE SOURCESOther sources of CO include indus-trial facilities – particularly fertiliz-er and mining operations – as well as chemical sites.

In India, LanzaTech has part-nered with Concord Enviro Sys-tems (CES) for a 100,000 gal/year fuel ethanol demonstration plant using municipal solid waste for feedstock. The companies ex-pect the ethanol plant to begin start-up in December 2012.

In the US, the company pur-chased a biorefinery in Soperton, Georgia, this year from bankrupt cellulosic ethanol producer Range Fuels. Holmgren said Lan-zaTech plans to leverage the fa-cilities’ existing gasification technology to produce biofuels and chemicals. ■

2,3 bUTANEdIOL dorIS de guzman & joSeph Chang new york

bio-based 2,3 bdO set for 2014 salesLanzaTech expects to commercialize carbon monoxide-based ethanol by 2013 and 2,3 butanediol by the end of 2014

LanzaTech will use industrial waste gas carbon monoxide as feedstock in its production of 2,3 butanediol

“We’ve done quite a bit of work and if we are right, we could commercialize very, very quickly”JENNIfER hOLMgREN CEO, LanzaTech

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