Pittsburgh International Airport: A glimpse at the future

While the proximity of the airport to the sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production facility is a factor in the fuel’s emissions reduction score, one airport in the Northeastern U.S. plans to take that to an extreme, with its own on-field refineries.

Four years ago, Pittsburgh International Airport (KPIT) launched a study to identify factors that could prevent its functionality, and its energy needs emerged as a potential area of concern. In 2021, the facility became energy-independent, establishing its own electrical microgrid powered by solar and natural gas-fired turbine generators.

It next turned its attention to the potential of loss of jet fuel access. “We’re not the people who produce fuel, but we thought maybe we could be involved in that,” said Chad Willis, director of planning and sustainability with the Allegheny County Airport Authority (ACAA) which operates KPIT. The ACAA reached out to the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pittsburgh to conduct a feasibility study of what it would take to construct an SAF refinery on the airport, which runs through 75 million gallons of jet fuel a year.

“We’re in a unique position when it comes to airports,” said Willis at the North American SAF Conference in September. “We actually have about 9,000 acres of property, which is way more than most airports in the country. We also have the benefit of being a major hub for US Airways, which no longer exists. What that meant, though, was that we had overbuilt infrastructure.” At the airport’s disposal is 4.5 million gallons of excess fuel storage capacity.

In addition, KPIT possesses other intrinsic benefits of interest to SAF producers. “Our region is well connected from its industrial past,” Willis explained. “It has lots of infrastructure in place because of that. Our airport is right along the Ohio River, which has lots of barge access; we’re connected to fuel pipelines; and we’re also connected to rail.”

In May, the ACAA unveiled plans for the development of two SAF production projects on airport property. The first will use captured methane to produce a syngas feedstock to produce more than enough fuel to fulfill the airport’s annual needs. The second similar capacity project will utilize biomass in the alcohol-to-jet process to produce another 75 million gallons or more of neat SAF a year, turning KPIT's SAF producer partners into renewable fuel exporters, and leveraging the area’s transportation infrastructure.

A third potential SAF project under consideration on a nearby property would take waste oils, fats, and greases collected from sewage treatment facilities and convert them into SAF in a small-scale demonstration plant. The first of the projects could be operational by 2027.