Technip Energies, LanzaTech to collaborate on “breakthrough” CO2-to-ethylene technology

(WO) – Technip Energies and LanzaTech Global, Inc. signed a Joint Collaboration Agreement to create a new pathway to sustainable ethylene utilizing their combined technologies. Together, LanzaTech’s carbon capture and utilization technology with Technip Energies’ Hummingbird technology transform waste carbon into ethylene, the most common building block in petrochemicals.

Ethylene is a building block for thousands of chemicals and materials. Its traditional production process is also one of the largest sources of carbon dioxide emissions in the chemical industry and remains one of its most challenging processes to decarbonize.

This new joint process uses carbon emissions as the starting point rather than virgin fossil carbon. First, up to 95% of the CO2 in the flue gas is captured from the furnaces of an ethylene cracker and mixed with hydrogen. Next, LanzaTech’s biorecycling technology transforms the captured waste carbon into ethanol. Finally, Technip Energies’ Hummingbird technology dehydrates the ethanol to ethylene.

Technip Energies and LanzaTech have collaborated on other sustainable solutions since 2020. Technip Energies also partners with LanzaJet, an independent company formed and spun off by LanzaTech, which includes the Hummingbird technology in the LanzaJet Alcohol-to-Jet process which makes sustainable aviation fuel from ethanol.