The team’s fuel from food waste resulted in a 165% drop in net carbon emissions compared to fossil jet fuel, not only because it’s cleaner, but also because the process removes millions of tons of food waste from landfills nationwide where it would produce methane, a greenhouse gas over 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
NREL’s analysis team has shown U.S. wet waste, including food waste, has enough energy content to replace about 20% of U.S. jet fuel consumption.
The group aspires to someday blend up to 70% of a version of its sustainable aviation fuel with conventional jet fuel.
Courtesy of University of Dayton
Large aviation companies like Southwest Airlines are taking notice of the group s work in the DOE’s wet waste flight demonstration project to find a biorefining process to produce sustainable aviation fuels compatible with existing jet engines and capable of supporting net-zero flight. Net-zero is the point where the reduction of carbon emissions balances what s emitted by jet engines
Josh Heyne, a University of Dayton aerospace engineering researcher and national expert on sustainable aviation fuel testing, and engineering graduate student Zhibin Yang contributed to NREL s work by evaluating about a dozen fuel samples from NREL to focus compositions to meet ASTM requirements. Heyne anticipates ASTM International could qualify this sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) for commercial airline use within one year of NREL production scale-up.
UD researchers on National Renewable Energy Laboratory team fast-tracking food waste into sustainable aviation fuel
University of Dayton researchers have helped a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) team take another step toward turning wet food waste into a sustainable aviation fuel.
Large aviation companies like Southwest Airlines are taking notice of the group s work in the DOE’s wet waste flight demonstration project to find a biorefining process to produce sustainable aviation fuels compatible with existing jet engines and capable of supporting net-zero flight. Net-zero is the point where the reduction of carbon emissions balances what s emitted by jet engines