Dr. Derek Griffin (LanzaTech) Carbon Recycling: Gas Fermentation for Fuel and Chemical Production
World energy demand is expected to increase by up to
40% by 2030. Over this time frame, the global population is also
anticipated to increase by approximately one billion to a total of 8
billion people. A critical challenge facing the global community is to
not only increase our energy resources, but to also minimize fossil
carbon emissions and safeguard the environment while ensuring that food
production and supply is not detrimentally impacted. In this regard,
renewable sources of transport fuels are of increasing importance. To
address carbon emissions from this sector, governments have mandated the
increased use of renewable transport fuels. Similarly, as a result of
consumer driven demand, the global market for more environmentally
sustainable alternatives to today’s fossil-derived chemicals is
anticipated to exceed $100 billion by 2020. The
production of biofuels and platform chemicals via gas fermentation is a
rapidly developing technology for the sustainable production of fuels
and chemicals that does not require food-based substrates as a
feedstock. LanzaTech has developed and scaled a complete process
platform to allow the continuous biological production of fuels and an
array of chemical intermediates from industrial waste gases at
pre-commercial scale. To date, this technology has been successfully
demonstrated with such diverse gas streams such as by-product gases from
steel making and syngas produced from gasified biomass and gasified
municipal solid waste.
LanzaTech has developed and scaled a proprietary
strain of an acetogenic clostridium that is used in combination with a
novel reactor design and optimized process chemistry in order to ensure
efficient, single-pass gas conversion with a high selectivity to the
product of interest. In order to maximise the value that can be added to
the array of gas resources that the LanzaTech process can use as an
input, the company has developed a robust genetic toolbox to allow the
carbon and energy consumed by its proprietary gas fermenting microbe to
be channelled into a spectrum of valuable chemicals. Gas fermentation
offers an efficient route to add much greater value to gas streams than
established technologies, while also reducing greenhouse emissions and
providing a strategically important alternative to food or farmed
resources for domestic production of sustainable fuels and chemicals at
an impactful scale.
Derek Griffin is a Senior Development Engineer with
LanzaTech; a biofuel company with a novel gas fermentation technology
that converts industrial gases to fuel and chemicals. Derek earned his
PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of California and his
Bachelors in Chemical from University of Massachusetts. His role is
focused on the design and scale-up of LanzaTech’s proprietary gas
fermentation process and is currently acting Site Manager at LanzaTech’s
Freedom Pines Biorefinery. Dr. Griffin was previously with Eli Lilly
pharmaceuticals focused on the design and scale-up of continuous
crystallization systems.
Dr. Kelly Tiller (Genera Energy Inc.) Surf’s Up! The Academic’s Guide to Surfing the Bioeconomy Wave
Surfer great Laird Hamilton characterized his sport as
one of the few where you look ahead of you to see what’s behind you. As
the waves in our progression toward a bio-based economy gather
momentum, the biomass feedstock sector better be looking ahead and
preparing. How close are we to being commercial ready? Commercial
readiness is not an academic question; it’s a question of scale,
capitalization and efficiency. From her vantage point in the
trenches—leading a company at the forefront of commercial energy crop
production, harvesting, transportation, storage and milling—Dr. Tiller
offers her perspectives on the biomass sector’s challenges and
opportunities ahead. And as someone who spent 15 years in academia
before taking the entrepreneurial plunge, Dr. Tiller also offers her
perspectives on the role of academia in commercial readiness and
success. Style and skill can mean the difference between excitement and
success versus fear and disaster for academics and research institutions
surfing the Bioeconomy Wave.
Kelly Tiller spent 15 years leading active programs in
agricultural policy and energy economics at the University of
Tennessee, where she also received her Ph.D. in agricultural economics.
Engineering a $70.5 million biofuels investment from the State of
Tennessee in 2007, Dr. Tiller founded Genera Energy in 2008 to execute
UT’s unprecedented Biofuels Initiative, achieving establishment of the
country’s largest energy crop acreage, a partnership with DuPont to
construct and operate one of the country’s first cellulosic ethanol
biorefineries, and development of a unique commercial-scale research
campus focused on the biomass supply chain. She left the university in
2012 to re-form Genera as a privately held biomass supply company and
has led Genera to become the country’s most recognized turn-key
commercial biomass feedstock supplier. Focus on innovation and
sustainability in delivering industrial biomass supply systems has
earned Genera the World Biofuels Market’s prestigious 2013 Sustainable
Feedstock Innovation Award and ranking among the Biofuels Digest’s Top
40 Small Companies in the Bioeconomy. She is widely recognized as an
industry expert, having been called on more than a half dozen times to
testify before Congress and receiving recognitions for her contributions
in science, leadership, and her community.
Dr. Mark Windham (University of Tennessee) The Southeastern Conference: Its Roots and Traditions
In the late 1800’s the Southern Intercollegiate
Athletic Association was formed to regulate athletic teams in the
southern U.S (especially baseball). Approximately 25 years later, the
Southern Conference was formed by members who would one day be part of
the SEC. Technological advances such as filming games and radio divided
the conference because of philosophical differences on how to use these
technologies. Thirteen schools met in Knoxville, TN 1in 1932 and
formed the Southeastern Conference. Three charter member schools left
the conference between 1940 and 1968. Two left for financial reasons
and the other left because the coach felt his school was being treated
unfairly. Two recent expansions, 1991 and 2012, increased the number to
of members to 14. The presentation will look at why these conferences
formed and how traditions of each of the 14 member schools began. Don’t
come to hear the seminar unless you are prepared to laugh and laugh
hard. Hint: you don’t have to be a football fan.