The green light has been given for a demonstration plant to produce sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) using the direct air capture process. The announcement was made on Monday at a High-Level Conference on Synthetic SAF hosted by the Dutch minister for infrastructure and water management Cora van Nieuwenhuizen.
The Zenid plant will be developed by a consortium including SAF distributor SkyNRG, Swiss direct air capture pioneers Climeworks and Rotterdam The Hague Airport, although the location of the plant has yet to be finalised.
The plant, which will be operated by global energy company Uniper, will include a direct air capture plant that takes CO2 from the air and feeds it to a highly efficient co-electrolysis unit, which is turned into syngas by adding water. The syngas is transformed into liquid hydrocarbons by a modular Fischer-Tropsch reactor and then refined into sustainable aviation fuel.
Christoph Gebald of Climeworks said, “The launch of Zenid shows the commitment of the industry towards fully circular fuels from air and their role to substantially reduce aviation’s CO2 emissions.”