Green Options

LanzaTech, a small company based in New Zealand, has developed a proprietary microbe that feasts on the carbon monoxide in waste gas from steel mills and converts it to pure ethanol.  Last year the company launched a pilot facility at the New Zealand Steel plant near the city of Auckland, and its microbes have been happily churning out ethanol without the need for expensive pre-conditioning to remove contaminants.

LanzaTech has found that the same low-cost technology can be applied to biomass syngas, but the real excitement is in the success of this first-ever attempt to capture and convert steel mill waste gas into a clean, sustainable fuel.

Researchers in have discovered ancient, extremophile life forms that survive with neither light nor oxygen underground in Antarctica.

From the surface, the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Eastern Antarctica appears to be one of the most desolate places on Earth. And indeed it is. Apart from a few glaciers, the land is ice-free. No animals live here, and what few plants are able to are simple planktonic forms. But recently, a team of researchers have discovered evidence of a thriving community of extremophile microbes thriving several hundred feet below the barren surface.