Sustainable Aviation Fuels from Agricultural Waste

This proposal seeks to develop a novel, cost-competitive and scalable process for manufacturing of 100% bio-based jet fuels ranged branched hydrocarbons, referred here to as Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF), from agricultural and other inedible lignocellulosic biomass waste. These wastes have abundant supply on scale necessary to meet SAF’s commercial demand by Federal and non-Federal aviation industries. Globally over 106 billion gallons of jet fuels are annually consumed for petroleum, accounting for ~2% of global carbon emissions. Only a fraction of jet fuels is currently produced from bio-feedstock. In this project, we will develop an integrated manufacturing processes for SAF production and mitigate scale up challenges arising from oxygenated feed that meets NASA’s net-zero emissions goals of topic described in topic A1.09. The technology platform entails energy-efficient conversion of biomass into low carbon numbers intermediates and their catalytic condensation to SAF consisting of C10-C15 branched hydrocarbons. The team has reported good SAF yield at quantitative conversion of raw materials in the batch process, which exhibited certain scale up challenges. In this project, we will develop a process-intensified integrated manufacturing process for SAF to mitigate challenge observed in the batch process. We will develop reactor modules, develop reaction conditions to obtain SAF that meets Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)’s SAF composition profile. The reactor module will enable concurrent water removal to debottleneck the scale up challenges. The key technical objectives are: 1.Develop, optimize and validate tubular reactors for unit operations 4 and 5. 2.Determine preliminary kinetic data 3.Tier alpha and beta specification measurements of SAF 4.Perform cost and global warming potentials analyses We aim to produce SAF that meet ASTM metrics and NASA's zero-emission goals. We anticipate a final TRL of 5.

Topic A1.09 Zero-Emissions Technologies for Aircraft (SBIR) under Subtopic Pointers T1.15 solicitates proposals that can lead to aircraft with zero emissions or highly reduced emissions. It further states that the FY2024 FOA is open to ideas that utilize sustainable aviation fuels, Jet-A, aviation gas, or batteries with greatly improved emissions as they may have a more near-term market and path to introduction. As described in the proposal, our sustainable aviation fuels containing 100% bio-based carbon from non-food waste biomass, especially agricultural waste, will enable at least 80% carbon emissions reduction with reference to current incumbent petroleum-based jet fuels on the basis of our current state of analysis. Most importantly, biomass is available in large volume as per the billion-tons report by the Department of Energy, which will enable SAF production at commercial volume to meet USA's projected volume for Federal and non-Federal aviation industries. The proposed SAF from our process will be also used for non-NASA aviation industries as per Federal Aviation Administration guidelines.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 3) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

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