By Deirdre Robert
Posted on June 29, 2010.
Sean Simpson is the chief scientist and co-founder of LanzaTech, a company that’s successfully devised technology to capture the carbon monoxide in low-hydrogen waste gases produced by the steel industry, turning it into lowest cost ethanol fuel.
Sean’s a happy man after LanzaTech recently secured a deal to work with China’s largest steel and iron conglomerate, Baosteel, and the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), to commercialise its fuel ethanol producing technology.
We managed to snatch a moment of Sean’s time before he spoke at today’s Clean Tech workshop - part of TechNZ’s Research and Innovation Workshop’s at the Auckland Museum.
How’s the LanzaTech-scape looking?
It’s looking great. We just signed a deal to construct a pre-commercial demo and that’s the last stage of development before we commercialise our product, meaning the technology can be fully commercialised in 2012.
How would you describe the bio-fuel market?
In a word: Infinite. There are estimates that there are three trillions litres of fuel in the market for fuel technology. It may as well be infinite.
In my view the future of bio-fuels is in high-density transport fuels like diesel and jet fuels, and that’s because there are so many options for lower density transport fuels like petrol already. Take electricity for example– that’s a great option for short-distance travelling.
How do you convince the skeptics and neigh-sayers that bio-fuel is part of the future energy conversation?
By putting an economic case to it. It shouldn’t turn into some sort of evangelism. It should simply be an economic argument.
Everything has to make sense economically and the economic argument has to win the day.
So what’s your economic argument?
Our bio-fuel is bloody cheap because we make our fuel from the waste products of a very big industry. Our processing costs are lower.
How is New Zealand doing on the international platform of clean-tech innovation?
It’s sad but I know more about what’s going on in the US than I do about what’s going on in New Zealand.
I think (in New Zealand) we need to be doing more in terms of innovation. We do an extremely good job but what we need to focus is on is not just coming up with the great ideas, but working out how to commercialise them - that’s what’s exciting to me.
We need to structure ourselves as innovators. Commercialising technology and putting technology into the hands of enthusiastic entrepreneurs that are going to take things out and actually make it happen is a big deal.
More about Sean and LanzaTech
Sean holds a PhD from York University, UK, and a Masters degree from Nottingham University, UK. Prior to LanzaTech, Sean had eight years experience in bio-products development. This included operating a cell culture facility and developing a pilot plant with Hoffmann La-Roche in Basel, Switzerland, health biologics with Sandoz Forschungsinstitute, Vienna, Austria, working on crop biologics with the Japan International Research Centre for Agricultural Sciences, Tsukuba, Japan, and most recently, pioneering a process for ethanol production from hardwood with Genesis R&D Corporation in New Zealand. The latter has since been spun out by Genesis R&D and established as a stand-alone company called BioJoule. Phew!
LanzaTech has successfully operated a pilot plant at New Zealand Steel at Glenbrook, near Auckland, for more than 2500 hours and continuously for more than 500 hours using steel mill waste gases as a feedstock for ethanol production.
