The sources of more sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) continue to develop, with early feedstocks like food chain waste being joined by new second-generation biofuels, which are now gaining traction. But what are these new sources of SAF, and what are the prospects? We sat down with Pratheepan Karunagaran, executive director at vegetable oil processor Apical, to learn more.
“First generation biofuels, which utilise feedstock in the food supply chain such as vegetable oils and food crops, compete with food and feed applications. This raises the question of choosing between food security and reducing carbon emissions,” Karunagaran tells us. “On the other hand, second generation biofuels utilise waste and residue as feedstock, hence removing the need to sacrifice food security. Using waste and residue feedstock for the production of SAF and hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) results in lower emissions, avoids competition with food and feed supply chain, and provides a higher reduction in carbon emissions along the entire product life cycle as compared to fossil fuels.”
There’s a win-win here, even a win-win-win: agribusiness can dispose of its waste more efficiently, while biofuel producers have a feedstock, and the environment wins both through reduced waste and lower overall emissions.
“Waste and residue feedstock is a sustainable and accessible solution to achieving greener skies. They do not compete with food and feed applications. In addition, Life Cycle Assessment studies showed that the Carbon Intensity of biofuels produced from waste and residue is up to 80-90 percent lower compared to the equivalent fossil fuels,” Karunagaran explains. “Our new plant in Huelva, Spain, is based on HEFA technology — which stands for Hydrotreated [sometimes Hydroprocessed] Esters and Fatty Acids — and will use 100% waste and residue feedstock from vegetable oil processing and used cooking oil to produce SAF and HVO. HEFA is currently the main available and tried and tested technology to produce HVO and SAF on a large scale basis.”
A key challenge to second-generation biofuels, particularly around the waste/residue feedstocks, is ensuring reliable and consistent availability. There is substantial investment required at this industrialisation stage of these new technologies, both in terms of capital (roughly a billion Euros) and in terms of the sunk carbon capital that must also be calculated.
“The main challenge of waste and residues is related to their availability across the regions, which requires significant efforts to build an extensive collection network and complex supply chain from the points of origination to the processing facilities,” Karunagaran notes.
As a result, Apical is entering this market via a joint venture with Spanish petrochemical company CEPSA near Huelva, near the southwestern corner of the Iberian peninsula, on a new 500,000 ton facility to produce second-generation biofuels.
Joint ventures where expertise is shared between fuel producers and feedstock producers such as this one in Huelva — southern Europe’s largest biofuels plant — can help ensure that the investment into facilities is matched by the supply of feedstock.
“This is where Apical can play a role by leveraging its leading position as an integrated processor, the world’s second largest vegetable oil processor, and one of the most sustainable operators to efficiently extract waste and residue in large volumes from our global supply chain in a transparent, traceable manner for the sustained production of SAF,” says Karunagaran.
Indeed, oil production expertise will come in useful as well, since feedstock consistency — and in some cases decontamination from agricultural and other substances — is important.
“With regard to the pre-treatment technology to remove contaminants from the waste and residues, Apical is able to provide its expertise based on similar installations in Southeast Asia and Spain,” Karunagaran notes.
With SAF pathways like municipal solid waste, alcohol-to-jet and second-generation biomass accelerating, this is exactly the kind of partnership investment that aviation needs in order to secure decarbonised fuel sources.
Author: John Walton
Published: 19 October 2023
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