Spray Engineering Devices Limited (SED), a multidisciplinary engineering company dedicated to sustainable development, is partnering with LanzaTech in first-of-a-kind bagasse to ethanol project in India. The project will be able to use other feedstocks and will be able to bolt on to waste and residue sources to provide a domestic feedstock source for low carbon ethanol.
To convert the solid biomass wastes to gases, LanzaTech will work with commercially proven gasification technology. The resulting carbon-rich gas will then be converted to ethanol using LanzaTech’s commercially proven gas fermentation platform. The integrated technology will have the flexibility to process a wide range of biomass feedstocks enabling rapid replication at other locations.
The Indian government is encouraging the production of cellulosic ethanol from agricultural wastes and residues that would otherwise be burnt on the fields and create harmful pollution. Not only does conversion to ethanol create a new source of income for local farmers, it is also in line with the governments’ biofuels roadmap to increase production of 2G, non-food or feed-based ethanol across the country to meet its 20% ethanol blending mandate by 2025.
Today India’s emphasis is on ground transportation, but India, poised to become the 3rd largest aviation market by 2024, has an opportunity to leverage domestic, distributed agricultural wastes and residues and make ethanol that can be converted to a drop in sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) or renewable diesel. Using the LanzaJet Alcohol-to-Jet (ATJ) Process, developed by LanzaTech and DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). The LanzaJet ATJ Process can use any source of sustainable ethanol to make fuel. Beyond 2030, this project will provide new value for ethanol—not just in cars but in trucks (renewable diesel) and jets (SAF).