LANZATECH has won the Green Technology Innovator of the Year award for its technology which recycles waste gases from steel mill flues.
New Zealand based LanzaTech can produce low cost ethanol from waste gases and biomass. Frost and Sullivan presented the company with the innovator award at the Asia Pacific Industrial Technologies Awards in Singapore.
According to LanzaTech, its waste gas recycling process is attracting substantial interest from China and the United States.
LanzaTech has been successfully operating a pilot plant at New Zealand Steel at Glenbrook, near Auckland, since 2008. This pilot plant has run for more than 2500 hours and continuously for more than 500 hours.
The pilot plant draws gas directly from the steel making converter-off gas stream. This gas is filtered to remove particulates and oxygen, after which it is processed into ethanol.
The company claims the pilot plant demonstrates the potential for processing the steel making converter-off gas stream into ethanol at commercial rates. The basis of the LanzaTech technology is a proprietary microbe which produces ethanol from carbon monoxide.