TechnipFMC supplies ethylene tech to LanzaTech aviation fuel biorefinery

Subsea, onshore/offshore and surface projects contractor TechnipFMC says that its proprietary Hummingbird ethanol-to-ethylene technology has been selected by LanzaTech Inc. for a key application which, when combined with LanzaTech’s Alcohol-to-Jet (ATJ) technology, can be used to manufacture sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) using ethanol as raw material. LanzaTech’s spin off sustainable aviation fuel company, LanzaJet, is the exclusive licensor of the LanzaTech ATJ technology.

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These sustainable technologies will be deployed in a LanzaJet first commercial demonstration scale integrated biorefinery at LanzaTech’s Freedom Pines site in Soperton, Georgia, US, that will produce 10 million gallons/year of SAF and renewable diesel starting from sustainable ethanol sources. The facility which is partially funded by the US Department of Energy and leverages technology developed by Pacific Norwest National Lab (PNNL) will be in production in early 2022. The combination of these technologies will provide strong validation of the bio and circular economies in action.

For TechnipFMC, this is the first commercial-scale application of the Hummingbird ethanol-to-ethylene technology, which is based on a simple low-cost process for dehydrating ethanol to ethylene. A key aspect of this advanced technology is its proprietary catalyst resulting in a lower temperature, higher pressure, and more selective process compared to traditional ethanol dehydration processes that use alumina-based catalysts.