Luxembourgish steel and mining company ArcelorMittal have announced a collaboration with carbon recycling company, LanzaTech, and technology service provider to the iron and steel industry, Primetals Technologies, to construct Europe's first ever commercial scale biofuel production facility.
The facility will create bioethanol, a semi-renewable form of energy, from waste gases produced from the steelmaking process, which would allow for more than an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions when compared with conventional fossil fuels.
ArcelorMittal has announced that the 47,000 ton ethanol/annum project, sufficient to fuel half a million cars with ethanol blended gasoline, intends to demonstrate the added value of recycling waste streams, not only by reducing emissions at source, hence reducing the company’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% of the carbon used in the chemistry of steelmaking leaves the process as carbon monoxide. Today, this waste gas stream is either flared or used to heat and power the steel mill. In either case, the carbon monoxide is combusted and the resulting CO2 is emitted. LanzaTech’s technology, however, will recycle the waste gases and ferment them with a proprietary microbe to produce bioethanol. For every tonne of bioethanol produced, 5.2 barrels of gasoline will be displaced and 2.3 tonnes of CO2 emissions will be reduced.
“ArcelorMittal and Primetals Technologies have consistently stayed on the cutting edge of innovation in the steel industry and have demonstrated their commitment to reducing their carbon emissions,” commented Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech. “We are tremendously excited to announce this partnership and our first production facility in Europe at a time when it is abundantly clear that we need all solutions and the commitment of large corporations, cities and countries around the world, to help us stay within our 2 degree carbon budget and keep fossil reserves in the ground.”
The €87 million flagship pilot project is due to commence later this year at ArcelorMittal's steel plant in Ghent, Belgium. 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.
The company reported that a total of €10.2 million in financing has been secured under the EU’s 2020 Horizon programme for research and development and talks are currently taking place with potential equity and debt partners.
Photo by ArcelorMittal
