Danone & LanzaTech to turn captured carbon into plastic bottles

A consortium of companies including sustainable fuel company LanzaTech and food giant Danone has discovered a new method for the production of monoethylene glycol (MEG), a key component for making sustainable PET plastics, resin, fibres, and bottles.

The carbon capture technology uses a specially engineered bacterium to convert carbon emissions directly into MEG through fermentation. This bypasses the need for an ethanol intermediate and simplifies the MEG supply chain.

Read more: Next 5 years "critical" for plastics sector to go circular & decarbonise

The technology converts carbon emissions sequestered from steel mills or gasified waste biomass directly into MEG. Then, the carbon capture tech uses a specially 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 companies say that the process has been proven and verified on a laboratory scale.

While no known natural organism produces MEG, through this proof-of-concept stage, LanzaTech has used synthetic biology and AI to discover several novel pathways to make MEG directly from carbon emissions. By combining and prototyping various sets of enzymes identified from different sources in novel ways, LanzaTech has managed to reprogramme its ethanol-producing bacteria to fix and channel carbon into MEG.

By producing MEG directly, the new technology cuts down the number of processing steps required to convert ethanol into ethylene, then ethylene oxide and then to MEG. LanzaTech anticipates that when scaled successfully after a multiyear development phase, the direct production process will lead to PET bottles and PET fibres with a reduced environmental impact.

"We have made a breakthrough in the production of sustainable PET that has vast potential to reduce the overall environmental impact of the process," said Dr Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech.

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

Read more: The partnership that is turning CO2 into ethanol

LanzaTech said in a statement that it would be continuing its partnerships with other firms to make packaging more sustainable and reduce its impact on the environment, adding that this proof-of-concept phase would lead to a scaling-up phase of the direct-to-MEG tech.

"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 sustainable packaging materials production. This technological collaboration is a key enabler to accelerate the development of this promising technology," said Pascal Chapon, Danone R&I Advanced Techno Materials Director.

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