by Craig Bettenhausen (Chemical & Engineering News) Airlines are eager to switch to renewable, low-carbon fuel—as soon as there’s enough to go around — On June 6, Malaysia Airlines flew its first passenger flight using jet fuel made in part by Neste from used cooking oil. It was an hour-long trip from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore. The firms say the fuel will be available at Kuala Lumpur going forward.
The aviation industry is determined to shed its carbon dioxide emissions by ditching fossil fuels. Depending on how you count carbon, airlines are responsible for 2.5–3.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the nonprofit Our World in Data. Though companies can cut emissions with better routing and aircraft design, there’s no avoiding the need to run planes on some kind of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
“We, our customers, this entire industry are absolutely committed to decarbonizing,” said Dale Smith, who leads Boeing’s environmental strategy for commercial flight in North America. He was speaking at the 2022 Advanced Bioeconomy Leadership Conference in March. “We’ve been working on this for a long time. We feel very confident that we can get there and that SAF is the lion’s share of the solution.”
Still, switching to SAF is a tall order that isn’t even beginning to be filled. Global demand for jet fuel is roughly 100 billion gal (379 billion L) per year, according to Jimmy Samartzis, CEO of the SAF technology firm LanzaJet. As of 2021, the biofuel industry was making only about 33 million gal of SAF per year. US president Joe Biden has set a goal for the US to produce 3 billion gal by 2030 and 35 billion gal by 2050. Other countries and regions are setting comparable targets.
To live up to the green ambitions of airlines and governments, SAF production technology needs to mature and scale up, and fast. Jill Blickstein, an American Airlines managing director for sustainability, said at a recent conference held by the nonprofit Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative.
Corporate and academic researchers are developing several chemical routes to SAF. If they can scale up and reduce costs to a reasonable level, airline customers will be lining up. The SAF industry also needs to expand its supply of renewable feedstocks and determine how to compete for production capacity with ground transportation fuels like renewable diesel. SAF won’t succeed unless all that happens.
CHEMICAL CONVERSION
Almost all the SAF being flown today is made from fats and oils via the HEFA process. The oil company Neste and the biofuel maker World Energy are the main producers, and both firms are expanding significantly. Neste is spending $1.5 billion to expand its Singapore plant from 34 million gal per year to 495 million gal by 2023. World Energy is working with Air Products on a $2 billion project at its site near Los Angeles to grow from 49 million gal to 340 million gal by 2025.