Danone and LanzaTech consortium transforms carbon into “key building block” for plastic packaging

30 May 2022 --- A consortium including LanzaTech and Danone has developed a technology to convert carbon emissions from steel mills or gasified waste biomass into monoethylene glycol, (MEG), which forms a key building block for PET, resin, fibers and bottles. 

“We have made a breakthrough in the production of [environmentally] sustainable PET that has vast potential to reduce the overall environmental impact of the process,” highlights Dr. Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech. 

“This is a technological breakthrough which could have significant impact, with applications in multiple sectors, including packaging and textiles.”

The carbon capture technology uses a proprietary engineered bacterium to convert carbon emissions directly into MEG through fermentation, bypassing the need for an ethanol intermediate, and simplifying the MEG supply chain. The direct production of MEG was proven at laboratory scale and the presence of MEG was confirmed by two external laboratories.

Gaining MEG from carbon
While there is no organism in nature known to produce MEG, through this proof-of-concept stage, LanzaTech has used Synthetic Biology and AI tools to discover multiple novel pathways to make MEG directly from carbon emissions.

“This is a technological breakthrough which could have significant impact, with applications in multiple sectors,” says LanzaTech CEO Holmgren.By combining and prototyping various sets of enzymes identified from different sources in novel ways, LanzaTech has reprogrammed its ethanol producing bacteria to fix and channel carbon into MEG.

LanzaTech says this early-stage proof of concept work shows “for the first time” that it is possible for a bacterium to directly produce MEG from gas. By producing MEG directly, the new technology avoids the multiple processing steps required to convert ethanol into ethylene, then ethylene oxide and then to MEG. 

Environmental effects
The company anticipates that when scaled successfully after a multiyear development phase, the direct production process will lead to PET bottles and PET fibers with a reduced environmental impact.

LanzaTech is partnering with leading companies to improve the environmental impact of packaging. Given the success of this proof-of-concept phase, LanzaTech, with the support of Danone, plans to continue the scale-up phase of its direct-to-MEG technology.While there is no organism in nature known to produce MEG, LanzaTech has used Synthetic Biology and AI tools to make MEG from carbon emissions.

“We have been working with LanzaTech for years and strongly believe in the long-term capacity of this technology to become a game changer in the way to manage [environmentally] sustainable packaging materials production. This technological collaboration is a key enabler to accelerate the development of this promising technology,” says Pascal Chapon, Danone R&I advanced techno materials director. 

In 2020, L’Oréal partnered with energy giant Total and LanzaTech to create cosmetics plastic packaging from captured and recycled carbon emissions, which it plans to fully commercialize by 2025.

“As a major innovation for more responsible and [environmentally] sustainable packaging, this recycling process will be available to other companies who would like to work with us to reduce the environmental impact of their packaging,” Polina Huard, corporate media relations director for L’Oréal, told PackagingInsights at the time.

By Natalie Schwertheim

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