A New York-based startup that makes aviation fuel out of captured carbon dioxide says it could change the world if it can scale up production.
Air Company, which has its headquarters and production sites in Brooklyn, has made perfume and vodka and is now pushing into synthetic aviation fuel which it says could cut global greenhouse emissions by 10%.
It has financial backers and partners including some United States-based airlines, Toyota, supersonic plane maker Boom, the United States military, the investment arm of the CIA and Nasa, which could use the fuel for return trips from Mars.
Air Company has adapted a century-old process that combines CO2 and hydrogen within its reactors – with its proprietary catalysts – to produce the fuel which can be dropped straight into aircraft engines.
It could be made in oil refinery-scale plants in the future but the company also is trialling container-size units that could be deployed to remote areas and can potentially be used in war zones.
Air Company has caught the eye of Air New Zealand, searching for a fossil fuel alternative to meet formidable environmental goals as it faces a global shortage of expensive sustainable aviation fuel. That is now being made from feedstock such as used cooking oil, animal fats and municipal waste and is expensive.
Air NZ is desperate to cut its 4.3 million tonnes of CO2 emissions (in the 2024 financial year), as part of a strategy to cut pollution that is being reworked after it found existing targets were not achievable. Air Company is thinking big.
“If we actually are successful, we could literally change the world,” says co-founder Gregory Constantine, an Australian arts graduate and entrepreneur. In 2017 he partnered with Stafford Sheehan who has a PhD in chemical physics from Yale.
“We have these two very different skill sets, l had this vision of where I thought business could get to and he had the technological perspective.”
But it started small – for a reason.
Soon after it was set up in 2017 it made high-end vodka and perfume it made using the process. It was a way of making money and introducing the process to the market.
“We launched these consumer products early on and they did tremendously well. Our vodka product was in every Michelin star restaurant in New York,” he says.
“They are really great ways to generate money for business. But more importantly they were educational tools.”
Previous methods of producing synthetic fuel relied on natural gas, or the Fischer-Tropsch process developed in 1925 and used by the Nazis to keep fuel-starved Germany moving in World War II.
This process was a catalytic chemical reaction where carbon monoxide and hydrogen in syngas (a mixture of both), is converted into hydrocarbons.
Air Company’s technology simplifies the conversion process into a single-step, allowing it to create fuel-grade paraffins.
Constantine told the Herald during a visit to its Brooklyn headquarters that the technology could be used anywhere – licensing it is part of the business plan.
“The goal for Air Company is to see the technology used everywhere, not only geographically but, in a number of different industries as well.
“For places like Australia and New Zealand specifically there is an abundance of those feedstocks. We need power and we need land and we need CO2 – they are plentiful.’’
Hydrogen is the main cost.
While CO2 is abundant, hydrogen needs large amounts of energy to make it but New Zealand’s generally high percentage of renewable electricity makes this country a good place to produce it.
The Government last month released a paper that shows it is encouraging green hydrogen production by supporting access to overseas investment and reducing other barriers to setting up plants here.
“Deploying in a place like New Zealand would be fantastic because you then have the ability to produce fuel locally as well,” says Constantine.
Right now its fuel is about the same price as other Saf (which can be up to five times that of Jet A1) but with scale it could drop dramatically in price.
Air Company aims to start supplying its Airmade fuel to airlines by the end of the decade, the time frame in which Air NZ aims to have 10% of its flights powered by sustainable aviation fuel (Saf).
The airline’s head of sustainability and corporate affairs, Kiri Hannifin, says Air NZ has been watching Air Company’s progress for two years.
Existing feedstocks such as used cooking oil were in short supply and relatively expensive compared to traditional fossil fuel. “We will run out of the feedstocks and we will absolutely need synthetic Saf. These guys are at the forefront of making it and making it in a way that could be localised and spread anywhere that’s willing to take it.”
She says the airline would consider direct investment.
“One of the things that we know as an airline we have to do is to start investing and supporting the technology that we need to decarbonise and whether that’s next generation aircraft or whether it’s Saf. It’s something that we need to do so we’re beginning to invest in feasibility studies and projects. And I think investing in e-Saf like Air Company is probably part of our future because we know we’ll need it to scale up.”
During this current financial year, about 1.6% of Air NZ’s fuel comes from Saf. Late last year the airline made its biggest purchase from Neste; a 30 million litre consignment made from waste oil and fats that it will use out of Los Angeles and San Francisco flights.
Constantine says the business started from an incredibly strong position; near insatiable demand for a product that’s now in short supply in a sector desperately looking to go green.
Air travel is responsible for about 3% of carbon emissions but that is growing as it is one of the hardest sectors to decarbonise. Only about 0.3% of jet fuel was Saf in 2024.
The International Air Transport Association says that to reach its net zero CO2 emissions by 2050 between 3000 to over 6500 new renewable fuel plants will be needed. These will also produce renewable diesel and other fuels for other industries.
The annual average spending needed to build the new facilities over the 30-year period is about $128 billion ($220b) a year, in a best-case scenario.
Constantine said he welcomed other participants in the synthetic Saf market.
Spanish firm Moeve is one. It’s a global energy company formerly known as Cepsa that aims to become a leading producer of green molecules E-fuels, or synthetic fuels made with green hydrogen and captured biogenic CO2.
As part of its €8b ($14b) investment strategy, Moeve is developing the Andalusian Green Hydrogen Valley, one of the most ambitious green hydrogen hubs in Europe.
Constantine says Air Company is seeing the same demand.
“The goal of the company is just how quickly you can produce it and scale up – the demand is there. Supply is not even on the same page as how much demand there is, not only in the US, but globally as well.”
He said the cost to scale up to millions of tonnes of fuel would head towards the billions of dollars.
“The cost to set up is purely dependent on how small or big you want to go,” he says.
“We looked at all the businesses from decades ago and over history. They all failed because they all tried to just go straight to these really mass markets, run out of money, not come down the cost curve and not be able to produce at scale”
The company has attracted about US$110 million in investment and won a $65m contract with the US Department of Defense which successfully ran an unmanned plane on its drop-in fuel during a trial.
It is also working with Nasa.
“The reason why working with governments is so important is that not only are they a little bit more elastic on price they’re playing in different locations.”
One of those is Mars where hydrogen production is possible and the atmosphere is around 95% carbon dioxide. The Air Company process meant it would be possible to make the 225 million kilometre return journey from the Red Planet.
“The goal for them (Nasa) is can you make a fuel to bring people back?”
Constantine said space exploration helped launch solar panels and the same could happen for synthetic fuel production.
“It allows you to work on new and innovative ways to scale your technology that take you outside of the box and it could end up making you be more successful as well.”
How it works
Capture
CO2 is captured and sourced from industrial plants before it is emitted into the atmosphere. It then arrives in tanks after it has been cooled, pressurised and liquified. Air Company creates its own green hydrogen through on-site electrolysis with renewable energy.
Electrolysis
An electrolyser splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. The created oxygen gas is released as clean air into the atmosphere, and the hydrogen gas is fed into our Carbon Conversion Reactor with the captured carbon dioxide.
Carbon Conversion
Its patented reactor system is where the captured carbon and hydrogen meet and are converted. Within our Reactor is a tubular, fixed-bed flow system. The CO2 and hydrogen rise to each tube, which are filled with a patented catalyst. This facilitates a chemical reaction that produces a reactor liquid. The reactor liquid is composed of alcohols, alkanes and water.
Distillation
The proprietary distillation process separates the components of the reactor liquid. Chemicals (such as our ethanol and methanol), alkanes and water all have different boiling points, and therefore when heated to a specific temperature, separate.
The finished product
Impurity-free ethanol, methanol is created along with paraffins that can be used in jet engines, without blending. Water that is created by the process is fed back into the electrolyzer to begin the process again.
Grant Bradley has been working at the Herald since 1993. He is the Business Herald’s deputy editor and covers aviation and tourism.
The Herald travelled to New York courtesy of Air NZ
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