CHE.06 – Leftovers to Lift-off: Wood Waste to Jet Fuel

• Daniel Angulo
• Maxum Caesar

Aviation travel demand is increasing with the growing global population and income, so the need for renewable jet fuel is becoming increasingly more important to reduce the rate of climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The goal of this project is to meet this urgent need by using renewable wood wastes and wood residues to produce sustainable aviation fuel. The plant is designed to produce 1,500 barrels per day of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) from 400,000 tonnes per annum of feedstock in North Carolina. This location was chosen due to its high abundance of the renewable feedstock and the United States’ economic incentives for producing SAF. Syngas is produced from the wood waste by utilizing an innovative, two-stage gasification system that was designed to improve upon currently existing gasification technologies by eliminating the need for slag handling and reduces the need for extensive gas treatment. The syngas goes through a water-gas shift unit, the CO2 is sequestered for sustainability, and hydrogen is recovered through pressure-swing adsorption. The clean syngas is converted to crude oil in a Fischer-Tropsch unit and is refined in a hydrocracking unit utilizing the recovered hydrogen to meet jet fuel specifications. The final product is separated and recovered from renewable naphtha, which is a by-product of the process. The final design costs 450 MMUSD to build and 72 MMUSD/year to operate, with a revenue of 200 MMUSD, resulting in a 20-year net-present value of 335 MMUSD. This process demonstrates a clean and profitable method to producing jet fuel through utilization of renewable waste materials.