Celebrating National Aviation Day … and Commenting on How Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) Is Tied to Future Sustainability, and Success, of the Enterprise

August 19, 2020

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by Steve Csonka (Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuel Initiative) Today is National Aviation Day in the U.S., a recognition instituted by FDR in 1939, honoring the birthday of Orville Wright, but also creating awareness of, and celebrating the progress and vision associated with, the aviation industry. Today, that industry has become so much more than most envisioned 81 years ago, while having the potential to be even more impactful for future generations.

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As they have done regularly, in 2016, our colleagues at NASA created this poster to mark National Aviation Day.

National Aviation Day 2016 illustration, showing a little girl looking up into the sky at possible future aircraft.

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The NASA poster also depicts soaring birds, and when you consider their capabilities, it reminds us that what we still have perhaps much in nature to attempt to emulate for human aviation. I clearly recall the barn swallows that used to circle my tractor as I mowed fallow fields on the farm of my youth, stealthily hunting the insects attempting to escape the approaching demise of the brush-hog.

Swallows are magnificent fliers, wheeling around in tight arcs with incredible dexterity in changing direction to catch their fleeing insect prize. They often whirled within arm’s reach of my perch on the tractor, and created a desired distraction to the drudgery of row-pass upon row-pass.

This past weekend, after not experiencing such a spectacle for the past 42 years, I found myself being visited by three chittering, wheeling swallows while mowing the field adjacent to my current home. For the duration of their 45 minutes feeding frenzy (and the remainder of my morning chore), the tedium vanished, and I was transported back to my youth as so effectively depicted by NASA’s poster. It was quite the pleasant diversion from mind-numbingly current issues associated with politics, COVID, and my concerns about the current survival challenges pressing the aviation industry, and partially prompted me to pen this piece.

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Another unique, related story played out last week, one I suspect is similar to my own and hundreds of others similarly struck with the “aviophile” condition. Robert DeLaurentis, selfdescribed “Peace Pilot” / “Zen Pilot,” completed a transformational journey, “the Pole-toPole Peace Mission,” flying in the “Citizen of the World,” a highly modified Gulfstream TwinTurbo Commander 900. This was a polar circumnavigation of the planet, encompassing 26,000 nautical miles, visits to 23 countries and 6 continents, including an 18 hour solo segment over the South Pole. Roberts’s intent was simple – “to encourage and inspire.”

Mission accomplished, Robert! Furthermore, he was also performing science along the way. Oh, and the additional tie to this piece … he flew the mission using a SAF blend, acquired in part from Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation, via World Fuel Services and World Energy’s Paramount, CA SAF production facility. Gulfstream has been using SAF in their own operations since 2016, and are now also offering that fuel to select customers at their Long Beach facility. DeLaurentis used SAF to lower the environmental impact of his flight, so as not to detract from the overall benefits of the endeavor. SAF can do the same thing for all of civil aviation, and in fact we’ve already started doing so.

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Most people are unaware, but there already exists the first SAF blending mandate in Norway, with pending proposals to do the same across Scandinavia and much of Western EU. Funds that were provided to the industry to weather COVID impacts in some countries have sustainability commitments attached. In the same way that the industry has had to improve its performance on noise and criteria air pollutants (now with an increased focus on particulate matter) for the last four decades… we need to now stay in front of regulation on greenhouse gases.

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SAF are partially synthetic drop-in jet fuels made from bio-based or other circular-economy feedstock sources, using industrialized biochemical and thermochemical processes. On a gallon-per-gallon basis, today’s SAF blending components typically reduce net CO2 emissions by 50-80% versus conventional jet fuel. In several cases in development, the SAF will actually deliver negative carbon index scores, meaning that its production can remove more greenhouse gases from our environment than it will release during in-flight combustion. SAF are safe for use today, and have been used continuously at select airports (e.g. LAX) since 2016.

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The challenge that we have with SAF today, and why we are only uploading SAF at less than 0.1% of total jet fuel usage, is that they are more expensive than the depressed price of petroleum-derived jet fuel. They are also disadvantaged versus renewable diesel production.

So, this is the primary focus that CAAFI and others have right now; fostering the development of feedstocks, supply chains, conversion processes, and byproducts to enable lower-cost production and facilitate airline uptake.

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SAF usage will immediately start to lower the net GHG footprint of aviation. We don’t need to wait for unique technologies to work their way into the fleet. We don’t have to modify fuel distribution infrastructure. We simply need to stand-up the facilities to produce the fuels, in an accelerated fashion from the build-out described above. We know how to make them, we know they can be sustainable, and their use is impactful! In fact, we know some of these fuels will be carbon negative! With the right policy approach, we can see a significant ramp-up in production from a broad range of renewable and circular-economy resources.

Now the concerns:

1. Advanced aircraft technology

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About 80% of worldwide aviation fuel burn is associated with aircraft larger than the commuter or regional level. For these larger aircraft, fully electric technology levels associated with energy or power production and utilization per unit weight or volume is off by a factor of 50. And the associated enabling systems are in their infancy. What’s more, the certification basis does not exist.

So, let’s all be pragmatic - look in detail at 12 of the most discussed “next generation” commercial aircraft designs - 11 of them are hybrid-power aircraft, meaning, if successful, they will still burn jet fuel with a turbine to create primary power aboard the aircraft for subsequent conversion to electric propulsion. SAF enables this first use of the next generation of hybrid propulsion technology to deliver net GHG reductions. Let’s not forego spending on SAF R&D, demonstration and deployment right now in the pursuit of future sustainability improvements that will not see entry into service for another 30 years.

Let the advanced technologies come to the market when they are ready and justified, but pursue SAF now.

2. Hydrogen:

The best use of renewable hydrogen in our industry is for the creation of SAF, and this will likely be the case for at least the next 30 years. Hydrogen is critical to synthetically create SAF from renewable and circular-economy resources - the C7 to C17 family of pure hydrocarbons we know and love as jet fuel.

SAF production requires a fair amount of hydrogen depending on the production process (say between 1-4%+ of the mass of the feedstock used). Let’s produce sustainable hydrogen and use it in that fashion, rather than as a fuel itself.

The case for using something other than a turbine and hydrocarbon fuel, won’t be made until we see fully-fledged new aircraft designs that demonstrate double digit operating cost reductions versus the models pending and in-production now. We would also need someone to determine how to pay for the more costly refineries and infrastructure switches required by hydrogen. Let’s be pragmatic and stay focused on SAF, produced with renewable hydrogen, as the near-term solution.

3. Power to Liquids:

... These are SAF that are synthetically produced from hydrogen and carbon monoxide using renewable power, to deliver fuel with very low carbon indices. The hydrogen is proposed to be stripped from water or biogas, and the carbon monoxide is ripped from carbon dioxide, in some cases sourced from the atmosphere via Direct Air Capture. Again, I’m a technologist, and I appreciate the technical elegance, but I don’t appreciate the even higher price point of such fuels. Some estimates predict these fuels will only perhaps equal today’s (already high) production price of bio-derived SAF by 2035.

Again, let’s not forego spending on nearer-term SAF at the expense of pushing out progress. For those countries who believe they have no biomass resources to spare, then fine, spend away, but don’t expect near term reductions in GHGs from your airlines’ fleets. For the remaining majority of us, let’s use those agricultural residues, forestry residues, municipal solid waste, animal waste, sanitary waste-water treatment, industrial effluents, purpose grown lipids, etc. to produce the first few tens of billions of gallons of SAF. Then, when the time and technology are right, let’s look to P-t-L to form the basis of a second round of production expansion. READ MORE

Download PDF: CAAFI National Aviation Day OpEd

Sustainable Aviation Fuel Guide (Business Aviation Coalition for Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF Coalition))

Celebrating National Aviation Day and how Sustainable Aviation Fuel is tied to future sustainability, and success, of the enterprise (Biofuels Digest)

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