INDIAN business conglomerate Tata, along with Neath Port Talbot council and LanzaTech, are moving ahead with a plan to use waste gasses from Tata’s Port Talbot steel plant to power planes.
American bioengineering firm LanzaTech and Virgin Atlantic had worked together to fly from Orlando to London in 2018. The plane used recycled carbon jet fuel.
Waste gasses from the steel industry generate some 30 million gallons of biofuel for the aviation industry every year.
The US bioengineering firm’s gas fermentation process utilises carbon-rich industrial gases from steel production and turns them into ethanol.
Ethanol can then be converted into chemical products and fuel.
Neath Port Talbot council’s deputy leader Anthony Taylor was quoted by BBC: “We accept Tata is one of the main carbon emitters across the whole of Wales. We don’t want to endanger the economic side of things, but we have to tackle the environmental issues from this as well.”
“But also economically taking something that has previously been regarded as waste in the industrial process and actually harnessing it gives Tata Steel the opportunity to make some money from the waste it produces.”
A Tata Steel spokesman said: “LanzaTech has the technology to transform waste CO2 from the steelmaking process into ethanol and is now seeking permission to develop a plant at our site in Port Talbot to convert that into jet fuel.
