Photo Credit: Velocys
A new, advanced reactor promises to transform captured carbon monoxide and hydrogen gases into drop-in sustainable aviation fuel for aircraft. Because the carbon used in synthesis is harvested directly from the atmosphere or industrial outputs rather than extracted from underground fossil reserves, combusting the final product releases no net additional carbon dioxide into the environment, deriving a major sustainability benefit.
To make clean jet fuel alternatives economically competitive for flight operators, equipment developers are engineering larger commercial equipment to boost production capacity. The introduction of higher-volume microchannel Fischer-Tropsch technology allows facilities to yield up to 800 barrels of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) daily using individual processing units. By generating larger quantities per system, refiners can reduce overall hardware requirements by up to 75%, streamlining infrastructure complexity and dramatically lowering operational costs for industrial synthetic fuel plants.
SAF is a biofuel used to power aircraft that has similar properties to conventional jet fuel, but with a smaller carbon footprint. SAF, which is made from renewable biomass and waste-based feedstocks, can be used in all existing turbine aircraft, and reduces aviation lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by as much as 80%.
