Biofuel Takes Flight: Virgin Atlantic 747 Aircraft Partly Powered by Recycled Fuel

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October 05, 2018

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by Neil Lancefield (Perth Now) The first commercial flight powered partly by a new form of biofuel converted from alcohol has been completed. Virgin Atlantic's Boeing 747 aircraft landed at London Gatwick with a fuel blend containing 5.0 per cent biofuel made from industrial waste gases converted into ethanol.

Sir Richard Branson, the airline's founder, guided the aircraft towards a stand after it touched down on Wednesday.

The billioniare told reporters it was “a historic day”. “The fuel is cleaner than normal jet aviation fuel,” he said.

The biofuel, produced by start-up firm LanzaTech, is certified to make up as much as 50 per cent of a plane's total fuel supply.

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Virgin Atlantic chief executive Craig Kreeger urged the Government to take the “critical next steps” of approving a change in legislation to allow such companies using carbon capture technology to be eligible for financial incentives, and to support investment in the first plants to produce the fuel.

LanzaTech is aiming to open three UK plants by 2025, producing enough fuel to fly all Virgin Atlantic's UK outbound flights in a 50/50 mix.

LanzaTech chief executive Jennifer Holmgren said: “We have shown that recycling waste carbon emissions into jet fuel is not impossible, that waste carbon needs to be thought as an opportunity not a liability, that carbon can be reused over and over again.” READ MORE; includes VIDEO

Virgin Atlantic’s first commercial flight powered by LanzaTech biofuel (Biofuels International)

Virgin Atlantic Flies First Transatlantic Flight Fueled by Recycled Carbon (Environmental and Energy Study Institute)

PNNL and LanzaTech team to make new jet fuel (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

First commercial flight partly fuelled by recycled waste lands in UK (The Guardian)

The world’s first commercial flight on fuel made from waste carbon gases: now, will policy get the framework right for global deployment? (Biofuels Digest)

PNNL and LanzaTech team to make new jet fuel (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

Sir Richard Branson welcomes landmark Virgin Atlantic biofuel flight (The Irish News)

Government support for LanzaTech's low-carbon jet fuel could enable three UK plants by 2025, says Virgin Atlantic (GreenAir Online)

An Historical Time for Renewable Jet Fuel (U.S. Department of Energy)

Excerpt from Environmental and Energy Study Institute: Under the Obama administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued an endangerment finding for aircraft, indicating that greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft are hazardous to public health. This finding requires the EPA to begin crafting regulations for aircraft emissions.

At the global level, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) announced a market-based CO2 reduction measure in 2017, designed to help stabilize future emissions at projected 2020 levels. The airline industry’s trade organization, IATA, has also committed to freezing aircraft emissions to 2005 levels by 2050.

Biofuels – derived from waste gases or more traditional sources such as crops or agricultural wastes – will play a role in meeting these standards and reducing overall aviation emissions, in addition to other energy efficiency measures, but U.S. policy is currently providing a disincentive to develop these fuels domestically.

Aviation Biofuels Receive Lopsided Treatment in U.S. Renewable Fuels Policy

LanzaTech is a Chicago-based company, but is largely commercializing its process overseas, in China, India, and now the United Kingdom (UK), due primarily to a more favorable policy environment for low carbon fuels in those countries. While the U.S.-based Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) do consider renewable jet fuel as a qualifying fuel under the program, the math is in favor of creating straight ethanol.

That’s because it takes over two gallons of ethanol to produce one gallon of jet fuel. This provides a very strong financial disincentive to produce renewable jet fuel in the United States, as ethanol credits under both the RFS and the LCFS are worth twice as much as renewable jet fuel credits.

It’s thought that new policy developments to incentivize carbon recycling could help move the needle for growth in domestic renewable jet fuels production. The newly enacted 45Q tax credit for carbon utilization, along with this week’s news that the LCFS will provide a credit for carbon sequestration in combination with biofuels production, may provide some incentive for companies who want to produce jet fuel from recycled waste gases. However, these waste-to-energy processes do not currently qualify as fuels under the RFS, and would be ineligible to receive credits, thus further tipping the scales.

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Virgin Atlantic CEO Richard Branson would like to see the UK become a major hub for the low-carbon aviation fuel, urging the creation of three facilities, which could produce up to 125 million gallons per year of the fuel. READ MORE

Excerpts from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory: LanzaTech, a Chicago-based company, developed a unique carbon recycling technology that operates similarly to traditional fermentation but instead of using sugars and yeast to make alcohol, waste carbon-rich gases, such as those found at industrial manufacturing sites, are converted by bacteria to fuels and chemicals, such as ethanol. The ethanol can be used for a range of low carbon products, including alcohol-to-jet synthetic paraffinic kerosene (ATJ-SPK) which is now eligible to be used in commercial flights at up to 50 percent blends with conventional jet fuel.

LanzaTech turned to the catalytic expertise of PNNL, a U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory, which developed a unique catalytic process and proprietary catalyst to upgrade the ethanol to (ATJ-SPK). The catalyst removes oxygen from the ethanol in the form of water, and then combines the remaining hydrocarbon molecules to form chains large enough for jet fuel without forming aromatics that lead to soot when burned.

LanzaTech then scaled up the technology. The ethanol was converted to 4000 gallons of ATJ-SPK at LanzaTech's Freedom Pines facility in Georgia and met all the specifications required for use in commercial aviation. In April 2018, an international standards body approved the ethanol-to-jet fuel pathway for aviation turbine fuel at up to a 50 percent blend ratio with standard, petroleum-based jet fuel based on LanzaTech's Research Report.

DOE's Bioenergy Technologies Office has been instrumental in supporting the technology development. With co-funding from BETO, LanzaTech is now preparing a design and engineering package for an ATJ production facility implementing the LanzaTech-PNNL ethanol based ATJ-SPK pathway. LanzaTech's Freedom Pines site is the location of a planned facility which would be able to convert sustainable ethanol to millions of gallons per year of low carbon jet and diesel fuels.

"This fuel exceeds the properties of petroleum-based jet fuel in terms of efficiency and burns much cleaner," said John Holladay, PNNL's deputy manager for energy efficiency and renewable energy. "And by recycling carbon already in the environment — in this case waste gas streams — it lets the world keep more petroleum sequestered the ground. The technology not only provides a viable source of sustainable jet fuel but also reduces the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere." READ MORE