US renewable fuel company DG Fuels has chosen technology co-developed by speciality chemicals and sustainable technologies company Johnson Matthey (JM) and global energy giant bp for its first sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) plant in Louisiana.
The 13,000 bpd (barrels per day) facility in St James Parish would produce enough SAF – after blending to 50% – to fuel more than 30,000 transatlantic flights a year, DG Fuels said on 10 April.
With waste biomass expected to be used as the feedstock to produce SAF at the US$4bn plant, the company said it planned to purchase around US$120M/year of sugarcane waste, with a third from local farmers.
“With this technology, we will create a product that … can be immediately substituted for conventional aviation fuel with no engine adaptations,” DG Fuels president Christopher J Chaput said.
JM and bp’s Fischer Tropsch (FT) CANS technology converts the synthesis gas derived from waste to produce synthetic crude, which is then further processed to produce synthetic kerosene which is then blended with conventional jet fuel to produce SAF.
Scheduled to start production in 2028, the proposed DG Fuels plant was expected to produce 600,000 tonnes/year of SAF once operational.
DG Fuels said it had secured offtake agreements with Delta Air Lines and Air France-KLM, had a strategic partnership with Airbus to scale up the use of SAF globally, and had plans for 10 further SAF production plants in the USA.
In addition to producing SAF, DG Fuels is also a developer of renewable hydrogen, synthetic SAF and diesel fuel.
