$6m DOE funding to diversify US SAF production

It always feels good to start a new year with good news. And we have two items this week to start off SAF in 2025. Firstly, the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the Environment Protection Agency announced $6m in funding for three projects equally split between them.
And the best bit is the funding will support projects to achieve (American Society for Testing Materials) ASTM certification, improve yields and achieve scale up.
One of the recipients is Air Company, a New York-based company developing technology to directly convert CO2 into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Air Company wants to use the funds to scale up its CO2 hydrogenation reactor.
The DOE/EPA funding will be used to refine yields and optimise the reactor – crucial for the next step of accurately estimating capital expenditures and equipment planning. Air Company also plans to produce SAF samples to secure ASTM International qualification. A much-needed step to scale their innovative technology.
The second recipient is California-based Erg Bio’s project called ASPIRE. The project aims to develop an advanced solvent pretreatment technology for integrated biorefineries. The goal of this project is to increase ethanol output from mixed woody feedstocks, agricultural residue mixtures, sorghum and sugarcane bagasse, which is the fibrous material left over after extracting liquid.
And finally, the last project, led by Terragia Biofuels, focuses on enhancing the conversion of corn stover into ethanol through consolidated bioprocessing (CBP). The company wants to utilise engineered thermophilic bacteria to streamline the process to achieve favourable economics for CBP.
The DOE said the funding for these projects will help provide the SAF industry with new technologies.
The department said the funding of these selected projects will help move them to the next phase of technology readiness level of 4-5, where they will pilot individual process steps before advancing to integrated piloting at TRL 6.
But this isn’t the only good news we have this week. In an analysis done by Maria Ferveni and Scott Irwin of University of Illinois, nameplate capacity of SAF production in the US will rise to 834.4m gallons in 2025. The capacity will be topped up by an addition of 144m gallons at Montana Renewables later this year.
To put this in context, this is nearly one-third of the 2030 US SAF Grand Challenge to scale SAF production to 3bn gallons. And this capacity is from the HEFA production pathway alone. The DOE’s $6m support will diversify the US SAF production base away from fats, oils and greases (FOG) towards other pathways that use advanced feedstocks such as ethanol and CO2.
Let’s hope the goods news continues to flow during the rest of 2025.
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