The Rubbishing of Aviation, and the Search for Carbon-Negative Rubbish

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Where I come from, rubbish is used as a verb, meaning to denigrate, and there’s been an awful lot of rubbishing going around with respect to aviation. Once, we Flew the Friendly Skies, but these days, the runways are getting surly, and when the UK government issued a report finding, as the BBC reports here, “new technology will allow domestic flights to be almost emissions-free by 2040, and international aviation to be near zero-carbon by mid-century,” the Beeb noted that “The policy has been ridiculed by environmentalists, who say the government is putting far too much faith in innovation. They say demand for flying and driving must be curbed if the UK is to meet its ambitious climate targets.”

I’ll sum it up this way: the UK government says we’ll all be flying on rubbish by 2040, and environmentalists cry “Rubbish!”

Who’s right? Faith in progress through technology or faith in demand reduction by any means. Depends upon your appetite for personal liberty, I suppose. But more importantly it depends on how much rubbish there is around to convert, and how much rubbish there is in all the claims made by technologists about the prospects for commercial production at massive-scale.

We need an awful lot of the first kind, and a sharp reduction in the second, kind, if we’re not to have a Close Encounter of the Third Kind with climate change writ large, or so we’re told by our betters.

Farewell, rubbish in Reno

Fulcrum BioEnergy, Inc., a pioneer in the production of low-carbon fuels, announced that it has completed construction on the world’s first commercial-scale plant converting household garbage into low-cost, zero-carbon transportation fuels. Through Fulcrum’s revolutionary process, the Sierra BioFuels Plant located east of Reno, Nevada, will convert 175,000 tons of prepared municipal solid waste (MSW) into approximately 11 million gallons of zero-carbon syncrude annually, which will then be upgraded to transportation fuels such as sustainable aviation fuel, renewable diesel and renewable gasoline – Fulcrum Fuel.

Farewell, rubbish in Mississippi

More new arrives from Mississippi. In this case, wood waste. That’s paper rubbish to you. This past week, Velocys announced the execution of a strategic framework agreement with Koch Project Solutions (KPS), a subsidiary of Koch Engineered Solutions, for Velocys’ Bayou Fuels biorefinery project in Natchez, Mississippi, U.S.

This project is expected to produce approximately 33 million US gallons/year (125 million liters/year) of sustainable aviation fuel with negative Carbon Intensity and naphtha made from woody biomass from the pine plantations in the counties surrounding Natchez in Mississippi. Upon successful execution of an EPC contract, KPS will be responsible for constructing and commissioning this first-of-its-kind facility, which includes the use of renewable power with carbon capture and storage of the plant’s by-product carbon dioxide.

The conversion process from gasification of wood chips to FT synthesis generates a significant volume of biogenic carbon dioxide as a by-product. This carbon dioxide is clean, of high concentration and dry and can be used for commercial purposes, replacing fossil based carbon dioxide, or permanently sequestered. The fuels produced from the facility will meet all requirements and regulations to be sold in the US and generate Federal and State credits under RFS-2 and the relevant State Low Carbon Fuel Standards.

Farewell, potentially, rubbish in the Northwest

Up in Seattle, Boeing, SkyNRG and SkyNRG Americas inked a partnership focused on scaling the availability and use of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) globally. Boeing will also invest in SkyNRG Americas’ SAF production project, for which Alaska Airlines is a previously announced partner. READ MORE