From CO2 to Sustainable Aviation Fuel: Navigating the Technology Landscape

Sustainable jet fuel plays a crucial role in reducing aviation's carbon footprint, offering a promising approach toward net-zero emissions in the aviation sector. This work investigates pathways for producing jet fuels directly from CO2. Given the early stage of many direct CO2 utilization technologies, identifying promising pathways is essential. Our investigation focuses on the three most important routes for jet fuel production, each of which employs a distinct intermediate compound. These routes are the reverse water–gas shift and Fischer–Tropsch (RWGS-FT) route, the methanol route, and the CO2 electrolysis route, which employ syngas, methanol, and ethylene as key intermediates, respectively. By performing comprehensive process simulations and analyzing the resulting energy intensity and thermal and CO2 efficiency of each route, these findings provide quantitative early-stage evaluations and allow us to identify key technical development requirements. Our results indicate that the methanol route exhibits the lowest energy intensity, followed by the RWGS-FT and CO2 electrolysis routes. H2 production accounts for a significant share of the energy demand for the RWGS-FT and methanol routes. The RWGS-FT route shows the lowest CO2 efficiency, while the methanol route achieves 92% CO2 efficiency including recycle streams, highlighting its potential for jet fuel production. Furthermore, the CO2 electrolysis route holds the potential to achieve close to 100% CO2 efficiency and requires significantly less H2 feedstock. However, it faces challenges of a high energy demand. In addition, our study investigates key effects of potential technology optimization, providing a guideline for research and technology optimization.