LanzaTech UK and Carbon Engineering team to produce SAF from CO2

In the UK, LanzaTech UK, and cleantech company Carbon Engineering (CE), have partnered on a first-of-a-kind project to create sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) out of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). Project AtmosFUEL will investigate the feasibility of a large-scale, commercial air-to-jet facility in the UK that will produce more than 100 million liters of SAF each year.

The proposed facility is targeted to be operational by the end of the decade and will demonstrate how this clean infrastructure can be rolled out across the UK and elsewhere to deliver significant aviation emission reductions, while creating thousands of jobs and cascading economic benefits. The project is one of eight projects shortlisted for the UK Department for Transport’s Green Fuels Green Skies Competition that will share £15 million in government funding to support plant development.

The project team, consisting of LanzaTech, CE, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, will examine how two proven technologies can be integrated to recycle atmospheric CO2 into ultra-low carbon jet fuel. CE’s Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology will capture CO2 directly from the atmosphere so it can be fed into LanzaTech’s Gas Fermentation process to produce low carbon ethanol. The ethanol will then be converted into SAF using the LanzaJetTM Alcohol-To-Jet technology, developed by LanzaTech and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

The fuel will undergo certification by the Roundtable on Sustainable Materials, globally recognized as the most robust approach to sustainability for the bio-based and circular economy. By recycling existing atmospheric CO2, the SAF produced will offer a more than 90 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional fossil jet fuel. Due to an unlimited feedstock – atmospheric CO2 – this solution can be scaled up to deliver large-scale quantities of SAF to help meet the UK’s 10% SAF by 2030 and up to 75% SAF by 2050 proposals.