Renewable Jet Fuel: Why Everything Is So Up In The Air, A View from the Cockpit

by Jonathan Lewis (Lee Enterprises Consulting/Biofuels Digest) Having flown the “heavy iron” for more than thirty (30) years, I can state with full confidence that there are only three (3) very important questions pilots have about Jet Fuel:

Everything else is more or less superfluous. But on any given day, passengers in the back can pick up a newspaper and read about yet another airline testing yet another renewable jet fuel produced by yet another process. The obvious question is thus, “If all of these renewable jet fuels and production processes are so great, how come the worlds’ airlines aren’t all using them to power their aircraft all the time?” After all, renewable jet fuel (RJ) is much better for the environment, provides for fuel/energy security and is actually a better fuel than petrojet.*

The answer is deceptively simple: Like the 1^st Generation biofuels of the past, RJ is a biofuel of the future, whose time has not quite arrived, but is surely enroute and just around the proverbial corner. The underlying reasons for this can be attributed to not only current market conditions, but to supply and logistics issues as well.

Looking at the current market price of renewable fuel feedstock immediately reveals another problem for both the RJ producer as well as the consumer: In today’s marketplace, the feedstock costs more than the finished petrojet product. For example, the current price of Yellow Grease is $0.27/pound or about $1.76/gallon, before processing. The finished price of the RJ will easily exceed $2.00/gallon, FOB. Even if the bio-refinery were at the airport, the airlines would pay more than last year’s price.

Of course, we all know that oil prices will rise sooner or later. But then, feedstock prices have the uncanny habit of mirroring petroleum marketplace price variations. So they can be expected to rise with oil prices and especially distillates.

HEFA processing begins with an “organic” oil of one kind or another: tallow, soybean oil, yellow grease, etc. Yellow Grease is probably one of the least expensive feedstocks available on the market today. In fact, the 27 May, 2016 price was USD $0.27/pound, or $1.76/gallon. If the H2 cost is added in, it is clear that the production costs will exceed $2.50/gallon, at a minimum. Again, this is not competitive with the current cost of petro-jet.

Therefore, not including the environmental benefits, beyond publicity and goodwill purposes, it would be extremely counter-productive for an airline to buy either F-T or HEFA fuels, and therefore, no reason for a Biorefinery to produce them. This is especially true because the market price of Renewable Diesel is more than that of RJ and it costs less to produce.

RJ Fuel Benefits and Little Known Facts

Of course, the major benefit of RJ is that is much better for the environment than petrojet. By definition, it is carbon neutral and in some cases, maybe even carbon negative insofar as the original processing may have involved a decarboxylation step, thus removing even more carbon from the renewable fuel [to be].

What may be equally interesting for the prospective airline consumer is somewhat more esoteric:

RJ (at least HEFA & F-T RJ’s) weigh less and have more energy per mass than petrojet.

What does this mean in practical terms? The last RJ we helped develop and tested at Gulf Hydrocarbon yielded the following specs:

Density: 780 Kg/m³ (2.95 Kg/gallon); Heat of Combustion: 46.49 MJ/Kg (15.9 MJ/gallon)

[Average] Density: 807.5 Kg/m³ (3.05 Kg/gallon); Heat of Combustion: 42.8 MJ/Kg (14.03 MJ/gallon)

It can be seen immediately that RJ weighs less per gallon, but has more energy per gallon.

The least expensive rate I could find on any airline for air cargo was USD $1.08/Kg. Thus, assuming our flight loaded up with the weight savings in cargo, this would bring an additional revenue of $18,360. If the flight took that cargo every day, this would mean additional revenues of $6,701,140/year (for just that flight). Obviously, if the practice were to spread to say, 100 aircraft, this could mean additional revenues in excess of $670 million/year.

It must also be remembered that not only did the aircraft use 4,473 gallons less fuel for the flight, if we could replace all of the fuel with RJ, the fuel used for the flight would have been carbon neutral. What this means in hard numbers can be illustrated from data released by the US Energy Information Administration: Every gallon of petrojet combusted releases 9.57 Kg of CO₂. So 37,500 USG X 9.57 = 358,875 Kg of CO₂ (or almost 359 metric tonnes of CO₂, just for that flight). The benefits of RJ utilization for the environment are simply too big to be ignored. In fact, the publicity value of those benefits are too big to be ignored….

So a very interesting solution might be a third party arrangement that leases or buys a refinery (especially one with a hydrotreater) and produces the RJ for the airline or business. In effect, not only would the net fuel cost be less than zero, it would be like being paid an additional $0.14/gallon for every gallon produced, sold and used. In the Houston area, this would also probably facilitate pipeline access. And even if the Blend Credit goes away (yet again), the net RJ production cost would still be only $0.86/gallon [today] with the RIN credit. And if the airline uses diesel vehicles, the refinery could also produce Renewable Diesel while reaping similar benefits.

Of course, the fuels would need to be approved and certified for service. READ MORE and MORE (GreenAir Online)