South Korea's top steelmaker Posco and New Zealand's LanzaTech have inked a memorandum of understanding by which Posco will license LanzaTech's microbe and gas fermentation technology to convert its flue gases to ethanol and other value-added products, LanzaTech announced in a statement Sunday. LanzaTech's technology, uses non-food renewable resources to produce ethanol and 2,3-butanediol, a key building block used to make polymers, plastics and hydrocarbon fuels.
Further details of the agreement were not available.
"It provides a new way to produce green energy and it will also contribute to reducing CO2 in steel plants," Noi-Ha Cho, Chief Technology Officer of Posco said. He added that the gas fermentation technology also creates more value from by-products of the steel-making process.
Posco's crude steel production in 2010 totalled at 33.7 million mt.
Posco, is the second company to announce the adoption of LanzaTech's technology. On January 18, India's state-owned Indian Oil Corporation signed a memorandum of understanding with LanzaTech to evaluate the usage of the technology at one of its refineries.
LanzaTech's technology is also being utilized by other companies such as China's Henan Coal and Chemical Industrial and Baosteel for producing fuel-grade ethanol from off gases from steel mills and synthesis gas derived from the gasification of coal.
