One company at the forefront of scaling the alcohol-to-jet process is Deerfield, Illinois-based LanzaJet, which earlier in the summer announced a strategic investment from aircraft major Airbus, expected to support its efforts.
In January 2024, the company announced the opening of the world’s first ethanol to sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production facility, LanzaJet Freedom Pines Fuels, located in Georgia. The plant will produce nine million gallons of SAF and one million gallons of renewable diesel in its first year of operations. Its opening is seen as a key milestone in meeting the US government’s SAF Grand Challenge, which calls for producing three billion gallons of SAFs by 2030 and for SAFs meeting 100% of US aviation fuel demand by 2050.
The facility is viewed by the US Department of Energy as a blueprint for innovative ways to produce SAF. The scale is expected to validate all the engineering assumptions, the cost of production and the required supply chains.
In a further vote of confidence towards the technology, the Biden-Harris Administration in August announced almost USD 300 million in awards for SAFs and low-emission aviation technologies, which included USD 3.1 million for the Freedom Pines Fuels facility in Georgia. The funding will allow LanzaJet to install equipment that will increase the SAF production capacity by over 518,000 gallons annually.
Sources:
https://www.lanzajet.com/news-insights/airbus
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lanzajet_saf-saf-sustainability-activity-7231343790425260032-6ynU/
