Airco’s e-SAF Facility To Validate Scalable Technology

Carbon conversion technology company Airco has reached a milestone at its pilot sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production facility in Brooklyn, New York. For the first time, it brought together the core elements of its innovative carbon dioxide-to-fuel process into a single, fully integrated system.

According to the company, the development, supported by a $70 million Series B fundraising round which closed in September last year, represents a major technological milestone for Airco and the broader effort to commercialize synthetic fuels. 

The facility serves as a proving ground for Airco’s processing technologies, which focus on converting “capturing CO2 and hydrogen into synthetic gas, which in turn is converted into optimized liquid fuel components for aviation,” explained the company.

Airco, which hopes this pilot plant will lay the groundwork for “future commercial-scale deployments,” said its proprietary Airmade technology is suitable to “enable scalable fuel production and seamless logistics, with the flexibility to deploy near end-users or within distribution networks.” This is achieved with a process described as a “continuous, integrated system,” combining various processing steps into a single operational unit. According to Airco, this represents a “crucial step towards commercial scalability” for e-SAF.

Alongside facilitating what Airco termed “essential testing to validate that its fuel components meet rigorous industry standards,” the plant will also serve to demonstrate the company’s broader vision for fuel production. “Designed to adapt to a wide range of environments and leverage diverse feedstocks, whether powered by renewable energy such as nuclear or advanced clean hydrogen production methods, the Airmade fuel plant represents a crucial step towards bringing synthetic aviation fuel towards commercial markets at scale,” Airco concluded.