Alternative fuels aims to change the sustainable jet fuel landscape and just picked up an $8 million suitcase from baggage carousel 3 at local ZRH. Ah, Zurich. The company is turning the sky – literally – green with its new fuel, which it calls aerobrew. Sure, it sounds a bit like a French press or maybe a boomerang, but the company has a few tricks up its sleeve, creating sustainable jet fuel made with renewable electricity — eSAF, among friends.
The company focuses on jet fuel as its main production, buying a ticket to produce jet fuel according to aviation standards. That’s a tall order: The fuel has to work in all kinds of inhospitable environments—the freezing cold of the high and blue, the sweltering heat of a Houston airstrip, and everything in between.
“Operational safety is paramount from fuel management on the ground to high altitude burn performance,” notes Leigh Hackett, co-founder and CCO of Metafuels.
The company aims to produce a sustainable 100% synthetic jet fuel substitute by 2030, which it says will integrate seamlessly into existing global renewable energy systems, providing an energy solution that works outside of traditional fossil fuel supply chains. Competitors in this space include LanzaJet.
The new $8 million investment is a major boost to Metafuels’ ambitious plans. The company sees rising costs of conventional fuels, impending environmental taxation and growing stakeholder pressure for sustainability as factors that will offset the initial cost of producing its ISAF. The round was led by Energy Impact Partners and Contrarian Ventures.
Metafuels’ eSAF technology enables a seamless transition from fossil-based kerosene, using a process they developed to convert green methanol into eSAF. Methanol, in turn, is produced from hydrogen (H2) and sustainably sourced carbon dioxide. Green X2 can be produced by electrolysis of water derived from renewable sources of electricity and CO2 can be captured from biogenic sources, including waste and residues in the short term. The long-term plan is to start direct air capture, which seems wonderfully poetic to me: Capture the gas, put it into airplanes, which fly into the air, and put it back into the air.
It could be an interesting stepping stone until serious battery-powered or hydrogen-powered planes take off—the magic of Metafuels’ aerobrew is that it can power aircraft without modifications, the company says.
“Once we get past the building blocks of selecting sustainably sourced carbon and hydrogen, we have a relatively simple, if groundbreaking, technology to convert these elements into jet fuel.” says Saurabh Kapoor, CEO and co-founder of Metafuels. “Then, because it’s a form of kerosene, you can use the same pipelines, infrastructure, storage, transportation and aircraft.”
