2024-01-07 07:00:00
New types of fuels have been developed in recent years to limit the impact of aviation on the climate Tristan Bergen 07/01/2024 08:00 4 min
A British start-up recently announced that it would use wastewater present in our sewers to produce an alternative to fossil kerosene used in aeronautics. It hopes to achieve this before 2030.
An efficient and above all sustainable fuel?
The start-up Firefly Green Fluels in England is currently developing new technology to transforming organic waste from sewers into fuel for airplanes. To do this, it recovers wastewater and, thanks to the hydrothermal liquefaction technique, obtains crude oil.
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This oil is then refined to obtain usable fuel for subsequent use in aviationin order to drastically reduce the carbon footprint of flights. Indeed, according to this same company, the fuel obtained would have a carbon footprint 90% lower than that of traditional kerosenewhich would be a real revolution in the field of aviation which is an industrial sector that is very polluting for our atmosphere today.
In addition to this new type of fuel, this manufacturing technique would also generate fertilizer from solid by-products, fertilizer which might therefore also be used in the agricultural industry. This new fuel production technique might therefore have multiple sustainable facets.
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The British start-up has also joined forces with a Hungarian low-cost company Wizz Air to future full-scale tests. The first laboratory tests have also shown that this new fuel would have results comparable to fossil kerosene in terms of performance but it remains in development and the first test flight is not not expected for regarding 5 years.
New types of fuels to reduce the environmental impact of aviation
Firefly Green Fuels’ initiative is not isolated to other companies have been developing alternatives to fossil kerosene for several years now in order to develop sustainable aviation fuels (SAF).
In the United States, LanzaJet, a company located in Illinois, is also developing technology to produce sustainable kerosene from the fermentation of agricultural waste. In France, Air Liquide is studying the possibility of supplying short and medium-haul flights with renewable hydrogen once more much less harmful to the environment than fossil kerosene.
Why should the “climate shadow” replace the carbon footprint?
These new types of fuels, produced for example from used oils, wood residues or even marine algaeare used in addition to conventional kerosene but in small proportions, which does not have a huge impact on greenhouse gas emissions.
An important step nevertheless seems to have been reached last year when the first transatlantic flight was carried out by the company Virgine Atlantic using 100% sustainable aviation fuel!
If these new fuels and new technologies are used on a larger scale in the coming years, the impact on global greenhouse gas emissions might be particularly significant and above all beneficial for the environment. As a reminder, air transport today represents approximately 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
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