Sustainability is rapidly becoming a top priority across all sectors, and aviation is no exception. Chinese scientists are developing a new chemical catalyst that converts “wood biomass” into green jet fuel more efficiently and cheaply than before.

Sustainable aviation fuel is key to cutting airline carbon emissions, but it is currently too expensive and scarce to replace regular fuel.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Shanghai Advanced Research has developed a new cobalt-manganese catalyst to advance sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production. The catalyst converts synthesis gas (syngas) derived from woody biomass and other feedstocks into SAF.

“Excellent performance in industrial test and techno-economic analysis further demonstrates the strong potential of this catalyst for scalable production of SAF,” the researchers noted in the study paper.

Fischer-Tropsch synthesis offers a key route for producing sustainable aviation fuel, but commercial adoption depends on developing more effective catalysts. Industrial chemistry typically suffers from a compromise where increasing reaction speeds results in unwanted gases instead of precise jet-fuel hydrocarbons. 

To solve this challenge, researchers designed a cobalt-manganese catalyst supported on etched Beta zeolites. This specialized material simultaneously optimizes processing speed and product selectivity. If scaled up, it could offer a clear path to practical, large-scale green fuel production.

In testing, it converted nearly 83 percent of carbon monoxide while directing over 67 percent of the resulting hydrocarbons into the specific carbon range needed for jet fuel. 

Aside from its high yield and efficiency, the material also shows good stability and is capable of dealing with feeds that are rich in carbon dioxide, which means that it is directly suitable for use with unrefined, real-world syngas sources.

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