One man’s trash is another’s jet fuel
Engineers aim to send renewable energy into the skies by breaking down garbage to create a low-carbon energy source
Houston engineers are designing an overseas facility to turn garbage into jet fuel, helping airlines prepare for an era of carbon-neutral growth.
“You’re not going to see electrified planes anytime in the near future,” said Philipp Stratmann, vice president of biofuels for Velocys. “So one thing the airlines are very keen on is sourcing of lowercarbon jet fuel.”
The United Kingdom facility will heat up non-recyclable garbage to release carbon molecules as a gas, then put that gas through Velocys’ specially
designed system. The result is a waxy crude that can be further refined into about 10 million gallons of fuel each year, most of that being sustainable jet fuel.
So instead of using a dieselpowered engine to drill oil from the ground, the facility will repurpose waste that would otherwise decompose and release harmful methane into the atmosphere.
U.K.-based Velocys, which has the bulk of its employees in Houston, is beginning to place its technology in several renewablefuel facilities, some focused on planes while others create diesel. It partnered with British Airways and Shell to develop the U.K. jet-fuel facility.
“We’re committed to making sure we’re as environmentally friendly as possible and continue to work on a number of green initiatives,” British Airways said in a statement. The planned Velocys plant will produce enough fuel to power all of its 787 Dreamliner operated flights from London to San Jose, Calif., and New Orleans for an entire year.
Such sustainable fuel projects will be crucial for the industry to meet a self-imposed carbon reduction targets, said Craig Schiller, manager at Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit that does research, consultation and implementation of clean energy technologies.
The International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations specialized agency, is creating global standards and strategies that will help airlines continue growing without increasing their carbon footprint from 2020 levels.
The 2050 ICAO Vision for Sustainable Aviation Fuels, for example, calls for the substitution of some conventional jet fuel with more sustainable alternatives. Airlines are working to meet these standards by using newer technologies and adopting more efficient practices that decrease their energy consumption.
Last month, ICAO defined a global management structure that will enable governments to monitor emissions from international flights and then use carbon emission offsetting programs to further reduce their overall environmental footprint.
Eligibility criteria for the actual carbon offsets, which can be purchased to help mitigate an organization’s carbon impact, are still being reviewed. Schiller said converting waste to jet fuel may be considered a carbon offset in the future, but those specifics are still being worked out.
More important, he said, is that the Velocys facility will create sustainable fuel.
The aviation industry is growing by 3 percent each year. To provide enough sustainable fuel to meet that anticipated growth, not considering the current levels of air traffic, will require more than 130 new facilities each year.
Schiller said there is currently only one facility in the world producing sustainable aviation fuel: AltAir Fuels’ facility in California. Two other facilities, by Fulcrum BioEnergy and Red Rock Biofuels, the latter a licensee of Velocys’ technology, are currently being developed.
“We are at a huge discrepancy between our goals we’re setting and what is actually happening,” he said.
The major roadblock is cost. Getting the proper federal certifications is costly for sustainable fuel creators. The fuel itself is pricey for airlines. That combination makes it difficult to attract investors.
But bringing more facilities online, Schiller said, will help drive down the prices. Velocys is hoping to complete construction in 2022.
Velocys’ commercialization efforts largely stem from a 2008 acquisition.
Oxford Catalysts Group, a spinoff from the University of Oxford, developed a Fischer Tropsch catalyst that was a bit too reactive and created a lot of heat in a very short time. Traditional reactor systems couldn’t dissipate that heat quickly enough.
Velocys, spun out of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, was developing a smaller reactor system. So the Oxford company acquired it a decade ago, and the combined entity moved to Houston in 2013.
“Houston obviously makes all the sense in the world,” Stratmann said, “given the access to engineering resources and commercial resources that exist within the oil and gas world.”
The first commercial project using Velocys’ technology was Envia Energy, which takes biogas from a landfill in Oklahoma City and converts it into a waxy crude that is separated to produce wax, diesel and naphtha fractions. These products are transported to other facilities to produce products like finished diesel fuel.
Envia can create about 3 million gallons of renewable petrochemical products each year. It’s a joint partnership with Waste Management and other organizations.
Velocys is also working to open a facility in Mississippi that turns forestry residue and waste, the stuff left behind by the pulp and paper industry, into diesel fuel.
“What we’re looking at is producing fuels that are chemically indistinguishable from their fossil counterparts,” Stratmann said. “So they will use the existing infrastructure that exists.”