Renewable biochemistry students tour LanzaTech biorefinery in GA

Students enrolled in Assistant Professor Pamela Peralta-Yahya’s (far right) Renewable Biochemistry class recently got a first-hand look at one of Georgia’s premier biorefineries, LanzaTech Freedom Pines.

The class is an elective for students pursuing a minor in Paper Science & Engineering. RBI, the administrator of the PSE program, supports these tours throughout the year in order for students to get an up-close look at facilities covering its diverse set of strategic research areas.

Brian Horton, far left, the Freedom Pines site general manager and a Georgia Tech alumni, conducted the tour. LanzaTech’s microbe has developed significant capabilities for the production of a variety of chemicals, thanks to the work of its synthetic biology team. The company has scaled this further, with the Freedom Pines site playing a core role in the development of this platform at scale.

LanzaTech produces next generation ‘advanced’ fuels by recycling waste industrial gases like those produced from steel making and other heavy industrial processes. LanzaTech takes these waste, carbon-rich gases to first make ethanol. The ethanol can be used for a range of low carbon products, including jet fuel.

At the heart of the LanzaTech process is a patented, wholly-owned microbes that convert carbon rich wastes and residues produced by industries such as steel manufacturing, oil refining and chemical production, as well as gases generated by gasification of forestry and agricultural residues, municipal waste into valuable fuel and chemical products through a process of gas fermentation.