The UK Department for Transport has released its shortlist of eight industry-led projects entered in its Green Fuels, Green Skies competition. Launched in March, the competition is designed to support UK companies that are pioneering new technologies to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
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The shortlisted companies will receive a share government funding worth £15 million to support the development of first-of-a-kind production plants designed to turn waste products such as household rubbish, waste wood and excess electricity into SAF.
According to the Department for Transport, each of the selected projects has the potential to produce SAF capable of reducing emissions by more than 70 per cent on a lifecycle basis when compared with conventional fossil-fuel-based jet fuel.
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Among the shortlisted proposals are plants that aim to produce jet fuel from atmospheric carbon dioxide, alcohol derived from waste, everyday household and commercial black bag rubbish and sewage.
The eight shortlisted organisations are:
1. Advanced Biofuel Solutions, which is planning to work with a British refinery and British engineering company to produce a detailed engineering design for a new facility in Cheshire that will use gasification and Fischer-Tropsch (FT) technology to convert 133,000 tonnes of waste a year into a biocrude that can be upgraded to aviation fuel.
2. Alfanar Energy, which plans to use gasification and FT technology to convert household and commercial waste into about 180 million litres of SAF and naphtha per year.
3. Fulcrum BioEnergy, which hopes to convert residual waste into around 100 million litres of SAF per year using gasification and FT technology.
4. Green Fuels Research, which is working with Petrofac and Cranfield University on technology to produce SAF from sewage sludge.
5. Lanzatech UK, which is hoping to build a plant in Port Talbot, South Wales to produce more than 100 million litres a year of SAF using ethanol from biogenic wastes and industry flue gases.
6. LanzaTech UK and Carbon Engineering, which are carrying out a feasibility study to look at converting carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere and hydrogen from water electrolysis into SAF using gas fermentation and alcohol-to-jet technology.
7. Nova Pangaea Technologies (UK), which is working with British Airways and LanzaJet to design to construct a facility to produces SAF using UK woody residues.
8. Velocys Projects, which is working with British Airways to build a commercial plant in Immingham, Lincolnshire, to turn hundreds of thousands of tonnes of black bag waste per year into SAF using gasification and FT technology.
