Fuel is dead Aiming to change the landscape of sustainable jet fuel, she just picked up an $8 million bag of 3-round luggage at her local ZRH. Ah, Zurich. The company is turning the skies green — literally — with its new fuel, which it calls aerobrew. Sure, it sounds like a French press or perhaps a bounce, but the company has a few tricks up its sleeve, producing sustainable aviation fuel made using renewable electricity — eSAF, among friends.
The company focuses on jet fuel as its core product, buying a ticket to make jet fuel comply with aviation standards. This is a tough one: The fuel must perform in all kinds of inhospitable environments — in the bitter cold of the highlands and the blue, the sweltering heat of the Houston airstrip and everything in between.
“Operational safety is paramount from fuel handling on the ground to high-altitude combustion performance,” notes Lee Hackett, co-founder and COO of Metafuels.
The company aims to produce a 100% synthetic jet fuel alternative by 2030, which it says will integrate seamlessly into existing global renewable energy systems, providing an energy solution that works outside traditional fossil fuel supply chains. Competitors in this space include LanzaJet.
The new $8 million investment is a major boost to Metafuels’ ambitious plans. The company sees the rising cost of conventional fuels, impending environmental taxes, and increasing stakeholder pressure for sustainability as factors that will offset the initial production costs of its ISAF. The tour was led by her Energy Impact Partners And Contrasting projects.
Metafuels’ eSAF technology enables a seamless transition away from fossil kerosene using a process it developed to convert green methanol to eSAF. Methanol, in turn, is produced from hydrogen (H2) and carbon dioxide from sustainable sources. Green H2 It can be generated from the electrolysis of water driven by renewable electricity and carbon dioxide2 They can be captured from biological sources, including short-term waste and debris. The long-term plan is to start with direct air capture, which sounds pretty poetic to me: capture the gas and put it in planes that fly through the air and then put it back in the air.
That could be an interesting starting point until battery- or hydrogen-powered planes take off in earnest — and the company says the magic of Metafuels aerobrew is that it can refuel planes without modifications.
“Once we move beyond the building blocks of sustainably sourced carbon and hydrogen, we move toward a relatively straightforward but groundbreaking technology for converting these components into jet fuel.” says Saurabh Kapoor, CEO and Co-Founder, Metafuels. “Then, because it’s a form of kerosene, you can use the same pipelines, infrastructure, storage, transportation and aircraft.”