ArcelorMittal, LanzaTech and Primetals Technologies announce partnership to construct breakthrough €87m biofuel production facility

13 July 2015 - ArcelorMittal, the world's leading steel and mining company, LanzaTech, the carbon recycling company, and Primetals Technologies, a leading technology and service provider to the iron and steel industry today announce they have entered into a letter of intent to construct Europe's first-ever commercial scale production facility to create bioethanol from waste gases produced during the steelmaking process. The resulting bioethanol can cut greenhouse gas emissions by over 80 per cent compared with conventional fossil fuels. It will predominantly be used in gasoline blending, but it can also be further processed into other products such as drop in jet fuel.

The 47,000 ton ethanol/annum project, sufficient to fuel half a million cars with ethanol blended gasoline, will demonstrate the added value of recycling waste streams, not only by reducing emissions at source, hence reducing ArcelorMittal's direct carbon footprint, but by keeping fossil fuels in the ground through the production of commodity chemicals and fuels that would otherwise be made from oil.

Approximately 50 per cent of the carbon used in the chemistry of steelmaking leaves the process as carbon monoxide. Today, this waste gas stream is combusted as carbon dioxide and either flared or used to heat and power the steel mill. In either case, the resulting CO₂ is emitted.

LanzaTech's technology, however, recycles the waste gases and ferments them with a proprietary microbe to produce bioethanol. Every ton of bioethanol produced, displaces 5.2 barrels of gasoline as well as reducing ArcelorMittal's CO₂ emissions by 2.3 tons.

LanzaTech's carbon recycling technology was recently awarded the United States' highest green chemistry honor, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Presidential Green Chemistry Award. LanzaTech is collaborating with companies across multiple sectors including US aircraft manufacturer Boeing and Japanese industrial conglomerate Mitsui.

Construction of the €87 million flagship pilot project, which will be located at ArcelorMittal's steel plant in Ghent, Belgium, is anticipated to commence later this year, with bioethanol production expected to start mid-2017. Construction will be in two phases, with phase one providing an initial capacity of 16,000 tons of ethanol per annum by mid-2017 and phase two, which will be completed in 2018, bringing the total capacity to 47,000 tons of ethanol per annum.