LanzaTech produces key chemical building block

LanzaTech has successfully produced 2,3-Butanediol (2,3-BD), a key building block used to make polymers, plastics and hydrocarbon fuels, using the company’s gas fermentation technology. LanzaTech CEO Jennifer Holmgren says the New Zealand clean tech company is the first to demonstrate that this platform chemical can be produced via fermentation from gases. LanzaTech’s microbial gas fermentation process potentially enables chemicals production to be decoupled from petroleum and valuable food resources. LanzaTech’s process uses non-food, low value gas feed stocks, including industrial waste gases such as those produced by steel mills, oil refineries, coal manufacturing, syngas from landfill-waste and reformed natural gas. (August 24, 2010)