This startup is using sunlight and captured CO2 to make jet fuel

In a field in the desert next to a freeway in Tucson, Arizona, the sun beams down on a large mirror in a research park, powering a small reactor nearby. Inside that reactor, captured carbon dioxide is being transformed into synthetic jet fuel.

“We remove the need for any sort of fossil fuel inputs,” says Jason Salfi, cofounder and CEO ofDimensional Energy, the startup running the small pilot installation. By early next year, the tiny facility will be producing only around half a barrel of fuel a day. But the company plans to use the same process—with a large field of heliostats, which are mirrors that concentrate solar power—at a sizable scale. In 2022, it hopes to get its sustainable aviation fuel certified for use and begin flight tests with a partner airline. The company is one of a handful of startups developing alternative jet fuels (LanzaTech, whichturns steel-factory emissions into ethanol， 是另一个）。

For the airline industry, which emitted 918 million tons of CO2 in 2019 before the pandemic temporarily slowed travel, the technology could be part of a larger transformation. Electric planes are in development, but are only likely to be feasible for short flights and small aircraft in the near future. “Right now, the energy density of the batteries are several times less than the energy density of the hydrocarbon fuels,” says Salfi, “so you just simply can’t store enough energy to fly long distances and to fly large amounts of passengers.” The company’s process could also be used to make fuel for long-distance trucking or shipping.

The technology, which grew out of research at Cornell University, uses electrolysis to split water and produce hydrogen, and then mixes the hydrogen and CO2 in its reactor to make syngas, or synthetic gas—which can be converted into liquid fuel and then refined into jet fuel. “The magic of our technology is where we integrate everything into one single stream,” he says. The tech makes it possible to make carbon monoxide, one component of the process, at a low cost, and makes the resulting fuel cost competitive. At scale, the company projects that the fuel could eventually cost less than $1 per gallon.

萨尔菲说：“我们的财务模型显示，在未来十年中，能够与化石燃料的喷气燃料具有成本均衡。”如果航空公司要购买它，到达那里至关重要。他说：“要让他们为任何有意义的可持续航空燃料支付溢价将是一场艰难的事情。”“即使他们今天要支付溢价，可持续航空燃料也只占整体市场的十分之一。。。。[t]嘿，除非在定价模型中，否则不会做出回应。像我们这样的公司只需要降低价格。”

Dimensional Energy plans to begin its process with CO2 captured from industry—for example, cement plants, which produce carbon dioxide as part of the chemical process even if they’re able to run on renewable energy. Eventually, asdirect air capture technology scales upto pull CO2 from the atmosphere, it could also be a source for the fuel, making it essentially carbon neutral. (Direct air capture also produces water, which could be used to make hydrogen in the process.) Other sources are also possible. Newtechnology that captures CO2 from trucks as they drive, for example, could theoretically be the source for new fuel for those trucks.

目前，法规限制了飞机可以使用的合成燃料量，最多可混合50％。这仍然会大大降低航班的碳足迹，但很快可能会允许100％的可持续航空燃料。燃料最终也可以用于混合飞机上，该混合动力飞机将燃料用于能源密集型起飞，但随后在天空中运行。