Mountain West Airport Sells a Biofuel Made with Animal Fat

April 26, 2022

Print This Article Share it With Friends

by Emma Gibson (KUNM Boise State Public Radio) Airplanes flying in or out of a Mountain West airport now can gas up with a blend of jet fuel and livestock fat. This spring, the Eagle County Regional Airport near Vail, Colorado, began offering the fatty jet fuel sourced from unwanted livestock tallow, as reported by the Colorado Sun. It's a so-called sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, with a lower carbon footprint.

Brian Batty works for Signature Flight Support, an aviation operations company that recently acquired the Vail Valley Jet Center. He says its SAF fuel reduces lifetime carbon dioxide emissions by 25% compared to fossil jet fuel.

...

“In the long run, SAF is going to have to bear the biggest burden to reduce the carbon that’s actually put out as the aircrafts move,” Batty said. “It’s the biggest impact we can make and that’s why this journey’s so important.”

...

Signature's SAF blend is about 30% derived from tallow and 70% traditional jet fuel. According to Signature Marketing Analyst Matt Franklin, traditional Jet A fuel at the Colorado airport is at $9.84 per gallon, as of Friday, while SAF fuel is at $10.64 per gallon. He emphasized that, like many things right now, fuel aviation prices are inflated. READ MORE

Straight from the slaughterhouse to aviation, Colorado is pumping beef fat into a fancy jet near you (The Colorado Sun)

Excerpt from Colorado Sun: Meanwhile, big companies like United Airlines and the owners of corporate private jets are under heavy pressure to do more about the environment. When they hear a fuel is available that can reduce the lifetime carbon footprint by 25% — a conservative estimate, according to RMI — they want it straight in their aircrafts’ veins, Vail Valley Jet Center General Manager Paul Gordon said.

They contact flight support centers and say, “Look, we want to buy sustainable aviation fuel every time we go flying. How do we accomplish this?” Gordon said, watching his tarmac crew load the Cirrus with the sustainable fuel.

Aviation and decarbonization experts have heard every Big Mac joke about the tallow fuel, but are adamant that innovative fuel technology is crucial for greenhouse gas reduction as the demand for world travel bounces back above pre-pandemic levels.

“We think that sustainable aviation fuel will play a really major role in starting to decarbonize the aviation sector, and is basically the only tool we have in our arsenal” before electrification becomes commercially viable in about 2030 to 2035, said RMI’s Laura Hutchinson, an aviation expert and manager in the nonprofit institute’s Climate-Aligned Industries section.

Other forms of sustainable aviation fuel are refined from wood mill waste, waste cooking oils, algae, municipal and farming sewage, and more. Promising future technology, Hutchinson said, includes capturing carbon to refine into hydrocarbons using clean energy. That will cut down on the supersize fries cracks, though tallow is a perfectly legitimate, highly engineered solution, she said.

...

It can be tough, she acknowledged, explaining to jet pilots or environmental groups or reporters how something like beef tallow reduces carbon by the time it’s shot out the back of a jet engine at 500 miles per hour.

“One of the most challenging things about it from a narrative standpoint is that all of the environmental benefit of it is on a lifecycle logic,” she said.

That means: When it burns, the carbon output is the same as kerosene.

But everything it took up to that point — well to wake in their parlance — produced less carbon than conventional fossil fuel extraction and refining. The beef fat, for example, would have otherwise gone to waste. By replacing 30% or more of the fossil fuel with a waste product, the carbon footprint is deemed measurably smaller by the UN and other international bodies charged with the calculations.

...

The jet center sold about 1,000 gallons of the sustainable fuel in its first month, Gordon estimates, out of a million gallons a month of overall fuel use in the busy ski season months.

...

Line service technician Nicola Oliveira and line operations manager Dwayne Noriega are happy to chat up the various pilots and passengers who see the decorated sustainable fuel truck and have questions.

“It’s going to take a long time to match the jet fuel actually sold,” Oliveira said. “But it’s a good thing.”

...

(Dr. Joel) Matta is willing to give the tallow fuel a try, as long as the engine manufacturer accepts the renderings as the real thing. (They do, according to RMI.)

“I don’t want to void my warranty,” Matta said.

As for the environmental benefits, Matta does not claim a megaphone on climate change. He sees the prime benefit of alternative aviation fuels as preserving a finite supply of fossil fuels for other uses.

Matta said he is among those who need more convincing that shortening has a carbon lifecycle advantage over kerosene.

“I kind of don’t get it,” Matta said. READ MORE