It’s beginning to look like bright skies for wider use of plant-based jet fuels
EMERYVILE, California: A new analysis by scientists at Berkeley Lab shows that sustainable plantbased bio-jet fuels could provide a competitive alternative to conventional petroleum fuels..
This is on the condition that current development and scale-up initiatives continue to push ahead successfully.
“Techno-economic analysis and life-cycle greenhouse gas mitigation cost of five routes to bio-jet fuel blendstocks,” published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, provides promising evidence that optimising the biofuel production pipeline is well worth the effort.
“It’s challenging to electrify aviation using batteries or fuel cells in part because of the weight restrictions on aircraft, so liquid biofuels have the potential to play a big role in greenhouse gas emissions reductions,” said lead author Corinne Scown, a researcher in Berkeley Lab’s Energy Technologies Area as well as DOE’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI).
“The team at JBEI has been working on biological routes to advanced bio-jet fuel blends that are not only derived from plant-based sugars but also have attractive properties that could actually provide an advantage over conventional jet fuels.”
Currently, teams based at JBEI are focused on optimising each stage of the bio-jet fuel production process. her coauthors used innovative analysis methods to assess whether the undertaking could actually reach the end game of a jet fuel alternative that airlines will want to use.
Added Scown: “If you were to push them to the ethanol benchmark – the technology to create ethanol from plant material like corn stalks, leaves, and cobs has been around a long time, and we can ferment sugars with a 90 per cent efficiency – how close would this get us to the market price of petroleum fuels? That is important to know now.” — Newswise