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.