Secretary of Energy and Senator Ossoff visit LanzaTech Freedom Pines Biorefinery
The site is a center of research, development and scale-up for LanzaTech’s commercial carbon capture and utilization technology with a specialized biomanufacturing center producing the “secret sauce” that is shipped from the United States to commercial partners around the world.
LanzaTech has scaled and demonstrated multiple technologies at the site in partnership with the Department of Energy (DOE), DOE’s National Laboratories, and several industrial partners, including piloting a next generation bioreactor, making chemicals, and converting ethanol made from recycled waste gases into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). This “recycled carbon” SAF was used on October 2, 2018 on a world first transatlantic flight from Orlando to London with Virgin Atlantic.
With the support from the Department of Energy, the site in Soperton has become a sustainable innovation hub, leveraging local talent to support domestic energy security and meet climate goals. Today, products can be found on store shelves manufactured with these technologies, including household cleaners and laundry detergents, packaging and soon textiles and fragrances.
As part of President Biden’s climate agenda, his Administration recently announced the Sustainable Aviation Grand Challenge, an ambitious commitment involving several federal departments and agencies to scale up production of SAF to 3 billion gallons per year by 2030. LanzaTech and LanzaJet pledged to produce a combined 1 billion gallons of SAF in the U.S. by 2030.
The first step will be a first-of-a-kind SAF facility called Freedom Pines Fuels, in Soperton. Producing 10 million gallons of SAF and renewable diesel per year from sustainably sourced ethanol from rural communities, the facility will use LanzaJet’s Alcohol to Jet (ATJ) technology, developed with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). There are also plans to install solar power production to provide renewable electricity to the entire site for all operations.
The ethanol sourced will be complemented by the ethanol produced from a pre-pilot facility utilizing CO2 and renewable hydrogen being built at the site. This facility, which is also co-funded by the DOE, will demonstrate a potentially limitless supply of sustainable feedstocks for domestic SAF and diesel production right in the heart of Georgia. Argonne National Lab will be a life cycle assessment partner.
Suncor, British Airways, Boeing, Alaska Airlines, and All Nippon Airways (ANA) have already made commitments to purchase and use all the SAF and renewable diesel produced at this site.
Category: Fuels
