THE RACE IS ON TO BUILD COMMERCIAL SCALE BIO AND SYNTHETIC AIRCRAFT FUEL PLANTS

Supporting the development of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is one of six key measures in the government’s Jet Zero Strategy published last year. That year, 26 million litres of SAF was supplied in the UK and the RAF flew the first wide bodied plane in the world on 100 per cent SAF. Taking off from Brize Norton, the Voyager A330 flew for 90 minutes powered entirely by 100 per cent SAF.

Later this year, Virgin Atlantic is aiming to operate the first net zero transatlantic flight, running on 100 per cent SAF, helped by £1 million in government funding.

Velocys, the Oxford-based sustainable fuels technology company, was awarded up to £27 million in government grants late last year to develop the first commercial scale waste-to-transport-fuels plant in the UK. It has now completed the work necessary to claim the first £7 million tranche.

The Altato project in Lincolnshire, being run in collaboration with British Airways, aims to turn household and office waste into jet fuel.

Converting solids into liquid fuels has been done industrially for decades. Velocys has modified the process for the production of jet fuel and other transport fuel from waste. Its proposed plant will take hundreds of thousands of tonnes per year of household and office waste (including hard-to-recycle plastics) left over after recycling, and convert them into cleaner burning, sustainable fuels for aviation and road use. This waste would otherwise end up in landfill or be incinerated.

The plant’s main product will be Synthetic Paraffinic Kerosene (SPK), which is approved worldwide for commercial aviation at up to 50 per cent in a blend with conventional jet fuel.

The other product is naphtha, a constituent of petrol, which will help to reduce the net CO2 emissions of road users.

Velocys says that its fuel will have 70 per cent lower greenhouse gas emissions than conventional jet fuel. It also reduces exhaust pollutants, in some cases by 90 per cent.

From Formula 1 high octane fuel to air and water

Velocys isn’t the only company working on new aviation fuel. Paddy Lowe, who had a hugely successful career as an engineer in Formula 1 (including leading the Mercedes technical team to its most successful season), is now developing synthetic gasoline and has set up Zero Petroleum in Bicester. Rather than reprocessing waste, however, the raw materials of his synthetic fuel are simply air and water –carbon dioxide is captured from air and hydrogen extracted from water. When the fuel is burned, it emits just the CO2 that was extracted to make them in the first place and if green electricity is used to power production, the fuel is totally carbon neutral.

In 2021, RAF Group Captain Peter Hackett flew an Ikarus C42 aircraft from Cotswold Airport in Gloucestershire, powered by Zero Petroleum’s synthetic gasoline. The 20-minute flight secured a Guinness World Record for the world’s first successful flight powered by synthetic fuel.

Now the race is on between Velocys and Zero Petroleum. In March, Zero Petroleum’s plans to build the world’s first synthetic fuel plant moved forward after it partnered with the UK engineering procurement and construction company Global E&C. It plans to build Plant Zero.1, a first-of-a-kind facility to create its synthetic fuels, paving the way towards mass production.

Zero Avia proves that hydrogen can power its aircraft

ZeroAvia, based at Cotswold Airport in Gloucestershire, is pursuing a different route and earlier this year made aviation history by flying the largest aircraft in the world to be powered by a hydrogenelectric engine.

The leader in zero-emission aviation took to the skies for the maiden flight of its 19-seat Dornier 228 testbed aircraft, retrofitted with a full-size prototype hydrogen-electric powertrain on the left wing of the aircraft.

The flight took place from the company’s R&D facility at Cotswold Airport at Kemble, Gloucestershire and lasted 10 minutes.

The aircraft completed a taxi, take-off, full pattern circuit and landing.

The landmark flight forms part of its HyFlyer II project, a major R&D programme backed by the government’s flagship Aerospace Technology Institute programme, which targets development of a 600kW powertrain to support 9-19 seat aircraft worldwide with zero-emission flight.

The twin-engine aircraft was retrofitted to incorporate ZeroAvia’s hydrogenelectric engine on its left wing, which then operated alongside a single Honeywell TPE-331 stock engine on the right.