The technology to transform wood into ethanol on a large scale has yet to be developed. LanzaTech, the company that purchased Range Fuels' assets in a foreclosure sale in January, may just be the first.
As we reported here in Post-Mortem: Range Fuels Sputters to the Auction Block, the sale of Range Fuel's assets was arranged after the Department of Agriculture (USDA) rejected a deal that would allow the company to transfer its debt obligations as well as its facility and equipment to LanzaTech.
It turns out the New Zealand-based company, which has developed a proprietary gas-liquid fermentation process to produce fuels and chemicals, found a much less expensive way to acquire Range’s assets. On January 3, 2012, they purchased the Soperton, Georgia facility for $5.1 million. Under the name Freedom Pines Biorefinery, the Soperton plant will be LanzaTech’s first production facility.
According to LanzaTech’s website, the company will “leverage some of the existing technology at the facility alongside [its] own proprietary technology to produce clean, renewable and domestic fuels and chemicals from the bountiful waste biomass in the region.”
As LanzaTech’s head of external relations, Freya Burton, told Melody M. Bomgardner of Chemical & Engineering News:
“We are planning to leave up some of the plant’s technology—potentially the gasifier. If it works, that would be fantastic” . . . . If the gasifier does not work, she adds, it is still a good buy for the firm. “We got the facility for its location and access to cheap feedstocks from local timber operations.”
According to S. Heather Duncan, a reporter with the Macon, Georgia Telegraph, Range Fuels’ plant manager Bud Klepper will stay on:
“The multistory gasifier was the most expensive element of the Range Fuels equipment the state grant helped buy. The gasifier basically superheated the wood chips with little oxygen, causing them to break down into their component elements and compounds, such as hydrogen, carbon monoxide and methane, Klepper said.
After that point, the plant consists of many large, twisting silver tubes that were used in Range’s method of converting the gas back to alcohols. Instead of this method, LanzaTech will build a bioreactor that will use microbes in a liquid to digest the gases, producing ethanol or other chemicals that can be used in making products such as synthetic rubber and solvents."
In addition to ethanol, LanzaTech’s process produces 2,3-butanediol as a co-product. Both of these products can be used to make jet fuel, a major focus of LanzaTech.
A LanzaTech team has been on the ground in Soperton assessing the facility and building scaffolding at the site to prepare to install the bioreactor, according to the Telegraph.
No word yet on a timeline for the project.
Suz-Anne Kinney
Forest2Market: July 14, 2023
