Published December 2023
In support of abatement of environmental carbon emissions, several countries have set zero carbon goals with target dates ranging from 2050 to 2070. There is a concerted effort to reduce these emissions in a timely manner via ambitious decarbonization goals in industrial and transportation sectors. Due to ever-growing consumption, modern societies are generating increasing waste products in municipal, agricultural and forestry sectors. The use of such waste products for biofuels production combines the dual sustainability objectives of fuels production and waste disposal. There is also an impetus for reducing the carbon emissions in a broader sense starting with the feedstock, the so-called life-cycle carbon emissions. The use of waste residues for fuel productions can significantly reduce life-cycle carbon emissions producing very low carbon intensity fuels. When combined with sequestration, these processes can produce deeply carbon-negative fuels, resulting in net carbon capture from atmosphere.
Air transport is one of the sizable components of carbon emissions to the environment. Commercial aviation is responsible for about 2%-3% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. US airlines have set a goal to reduce CO2 emissions by 50% in 2050 compared with 2005 levels. Other popular decarbonization strategies such as electric batteries, while popular for road transport, are considered to be infeasible for aviation due to weight limitations, especially for commercial long-haul flights. Consequently, bio-based sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) are the only viable option, at least in the near future. This report presents the techno-economic analysis of three industrial processes to produce aviation fuels from bio-derived waste resources. These processes are:
- SAF production from waste residues via FT-SPK pathway (Fulcrum Sierra Fuels)
- SAF production from waste residues via FT-SPK pathway (Velocys Bayou Fuels)
- SAF production from waste residues via IH2-CPK route (GTI/Shell)
The technological and economic assessment of the processes is Process Economics Program’s (PEP’s) independent interpretation of the companies’ commercial processes based on information presented in open literature, such as patents or technical articles, and may not reflect in whole or in part the actual plant configuration. We do believe that they are sufficiently representative of the processes and process economics within the range of accuracy necessary for economic evaluations of the conceptual process design.