New Zealand company Lanzatech is partnering with the Indian government to develop a new way of producing low carbon fuels from industrial waste.
It is teaming up with India's Centre for Advanced Bio-Energy - a joint venture between the Indian government and the Indian Oil Corporation.
Lanzatech has spent eight years developing ways to turn industrial waste into fuel by turning carbon monoxide into bio fuels, but the new collaboration involves turning carbon dioxide into fuel.
"This is a way of basically thinking about greenhouse gases as an opportunity rather than a problem," says Lanzatech chief scientist and co-founder Sean Simpson.
Using carbon monoxide could provide far wider commercial uses.
"It can be sourced from coal fired power stations," says Mr Simpson.
"Any industrial process that requires combustion produces carbon dioxide, and that's what our atmosphere is accumulating."
Lanzatech CEO Jennifer Holmgren says the fuel could replace gasoline and jet fuels produced from oil.
"We want to make useful products from carbon dioxide, [and] we want people to look at carbon as an opportunity rather than a liability," she says.
"I think if we do that everybody will embrace reducing their carbon footprint."
If and when the technology is successfully commercialised it will generate revenue not only for Lanzatech, but also for the industries that produce the waste.
The New Zealand Government has invested $14 million in Lanzatech. A lot more funding has come from corporate giants in Asia and the US, along with investors like Sun Microsystems founder Vinod Koshla and The Warehouse founder Sir Stephen Tindall.
Another of Lanzatech's projects involved partnering with China's Baosteel to use gases from steel mills to create ethanol - that project is just months away from being commercialised.
3 News
source: newshub archive
