As the demand for sustainable aviation fuels or “SAFs” continues to rise, with airlines having to contend with prohibitive costs and a lack of availability to meet their carbon neutrality commitments, a Swiss startup is placing its faith in a technology it believes will change all that.
Meet the good folks at Metafuels, who are working furiously at Switzerland’s largest research hub for natural and engineering sciences – the Paul Scherrer Institute in Würenlingen – on a pilot project and demonstration plant designed to use e-methanol to make e-SAFs.
The “e” prefix is premised on a SAF manufacturing process that uses renewable energy. The potential market size of e-SAFs could well be in the range of 80-120 billion gallons by 2050, according to projections offered by the International Energy Agency and the International Air Transport Association.
But at a time when e-SAFs projects are all the rage, what makes Metafuels stand out is the production process the startup has embraced, according to its co-founders – Saurabh Kapoor, CEO and Leigh Hackett, chairman.
Getting To The e-SAF Molecule More Efficiently
Typically, plants either produce or aim to produce e-SAFs by deploying the Fischer-Tropsch process. It is a sequence of chemical reactions that converts a mix of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, or synthetic gas, into liquid hydrocarbons.
But in a break from convention in 2021, when they incorporated Metafuels and put their ideas into action, Kapoor, Hackett, and Ulrich Koss, also a co-founder and chief technologist, opted for an alternative synthetic fuel pathway known as methanol synthesis.
It involves either producing methanol from carbon monoxide and hydrogen at high pressure using zinc oxide and copper as catalysts, or utilizing an existing sustainable methanol feedstock, and subsequently synthesizing a longer-chain hydrocarbon like jet fuel from methanol.
The process deploys additional steps and the use of a catalyst to produce the desired chemical reactions for Metafuels. “It’s all about how you convert methanol to SAF selectively and efficiently, where we believe we have a lead on competitors,” Kapoor said.
“The laboratory pilot at PSI, Switzerland has been successful and the demo plant is ready to go at the same site,” Kapoor confirmed, adding that their published and verified results will likely get more than just nods of approval from the wider industry.
“I can confidently say that if you put a Fischer-Tropsch project and our project on the same location, all other conditions being equal, the anticipated cost of production of our e-SAF will likely be around 50% lower and the yield around 80% higher. This is huge in terms of cost savings and efficiency gains.”
The startup counts a dozen specialists from ten different nationalities on its team, and high level collaboration from PSI led by Marco Ranocchiari, head of the institute’s Energy Systems Integration platform – a test facility for environmentally friendly energy sources of the future.
Deployment of AspenTech’s digital twin technology, rigorous monitoring, data collection, and analytics are among the vast array of tools that Metafuels is deploying to fine tune its plant technology, and the outcome its e-SAF product which has been branded as Aerobrew.
The Metafuels’ laboratory pilot is currently producing a liter a day of it on demand, with the demo plant capable of producing 50 liters per day.
Hackett added: “Aerobrew can replace conventional jet fuel regardless of the size, type of aircraft, and short-haul or long-haul. The ultimate ambition is to do single e-SAF production trains of up to 2,000 tons a day, making our offering highly scalable.
“Metafuels is the only methanol-to-SAF startup globally known to us. Other companies said to be working on making methanol-to-SAF pathways commercially viable are large established corporations.”
Commercializing The Brew
With a proven product and process underpinning its Aerobrew, things are getting “commercially serious” for Metafuels, Kapoor said. The company is selectively courting and receiving institutional money for its future plans.
“We ended 2024 with a capital raising round of $9 million in December. It follows an $8 million raise in 2023, as well as a $5 million grant from the Swiss Federal Office of Energy, thereby taking Metafuels’ total secured funding to $22 million.”
The latest round was led by Celsius Industries, RockCreek, Fortescue Energy Ventures and Verve Ventures. Existing investors – Energy Impact Partners and Contrarian Ventures – also extended their investment in Metafuels.
“This has enabled our 50 liter per day demo site at PSI. Metafuels has also signed an agreement to set up e-SAF facilities in Denmark and The Netherlands, with output capacities of 10 tons (12,000 liters) per day, starting with the Danish plant which could be onstream in 2028,” Hackett said.
As its project development phase gets underway, with Metafuels has commenced early offtake conversations, including through a potential buyers’ alliance with airlines, fuel suppliers, airports, and corporate travellers alike.
Local To Global
Alongside being involved in e-SAF projects, Metafuels will also market its technology via a licensing business, Kapoor noted.
“We intend to have two core commercial pathways – one, have our technology available to any interested party that wants to avail it by building e-SAF plants but is not interested in reverse engineering, and two, be active out there on seed projects that have a good chance of success.”
The Metafuels does not wish to be constrained by geography as an e-SAF solutions provider. But the startup’s initial focus for its project development business will likely be local and then pan-European.
“That’s because renewable electricity is not equally available in all geographies. This raises issues of decarbonization and competitiveness that make a fuel truly sustainable by effective usage of valuable feedstock – CO2 and renewable energy,” Kapoor said.
“Additionally, consideration would need to be given to whether the whole value chain, including methanol synthesis, can be implemented at one e-SAF production site or would methanol be shipped to it.”
“Ultimately, we want to be the lowest cost e-SAF or in other words be true enablers of affordable decarbonization of aviation. By that assertion, and given the airline industry’s need to lower emissions, we will see our projects and/or technology in multiple geographies in the not-too-distant future.”
Read the full article here
