A diagram showing how the company OXCCU makes what it bills as a cleaner, sustainable aviation fuel nearly requires a map to navigate.Â
While touted as a "one-step process," there are quite a few directional arrows linking processes when it comes to SAF, including air pollution, electrolysis, hydrogen production, and fuel synthesis. It all ends at a plane's gas tank.
But if the research leads to a scalable method, it could provide the path to making jet fuel from air pollution without creating much of it when the propellant is burned in an engine, according to the United Kingdom-based company. Better yet, OXCCU said on its website that existing planes can accommodate the fuel with little modifications.
It all starts with capturing heat-trapping carbon dioxide.
"The fuel we've already made in a single step from CO2 in the lab has created great excitement with its potential to massively reduce the cost of SAF, but the scale up is key," OXCCU CEO Andrew Symes said in a press release quoted by Interesting Engineering (IE).
Part of the breakthrough is simplification, in part by eliminating the step of turning carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide. The conversion is a common part of most other SAF production methods, per IE.
SAF is already used in the aviation industry. It's blended with jet fuel at up to 50% of the mix, reducing pollution for planes. The flight sector churns out about 2% of global carbon pollution, and around 12% of total fumes from transportation, all according to the U.S. Energy Department. Those gases contribute to a greater likelihood of severe weather that is impacting coastal neighborhoods and even insurance premiums, NASA reports.
OXCCU's fuel product, called OX-EFUEL, uses carbon dioxide from multiple sources, including direct air capture. The latter tech collects the planet-warming gas from the atmosphere anywhere it's set up, as the International Energy Agency describes the innovation.
It's something the U.S. government is investing heavily in as well. The large pollution vacuums in that plan would pump the gas safely into the ground for storage.
At OXCCU, renewable energy helps to turn it into SAF, in part by combining it with hydrogen made through electrolysis, a process using electricity to separate hydrogen from water. The carbon and hydrogen are turned into cleaner jet fuel in a synthesizer, per the graphic.
It's a technique the company said is more efficient, produces less pollution, and uses less energy, among other perks. It could help to transform how we power an air-travel industry that is also seeing developments in electric planes.
What's more, IE reported that trial flights have been completed in "different parts of the world," using 100% SAF.
You can help in the effort to curb travel-based pollution with some free, money-saving actions. Simply walking instead of driving for a couple of shorter trips each week can cut hundreds of pounds of world-warming fumes a year, all while saving you cash on gas expenses and improving your overall health.
At OXCCU, the team is working through trials with the goal of developing a system that can make more than 352 pounds of SAF a day as part of the commercialization plan, according to IE.
"Our mission is to enable future generations to fly without a climate impact," Symes said in the story.
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