The aviation industry, which is responsible for 2.5% of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. Zero carbon fuels for airplanes are an important part of decarbonizing flying. And while many are looking to making sustainable aviation fuels from biomass, it remains expensive and often competes with agriculture.
But now, researchers in Korea have come up with a way to convert landfill gases into liquid aviation fuels. Their integrated process is based on a special hybrid cobalt catalyst that they reported in the journal Fuel.
To take the research out of the lab, they built a pilot plant that can produce 100 kg of SAF a day, according to a press release.
Companies make SAF today mainly from used cooking oil and waste animal fats. These resources are limited. The team at the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT) instead turned to landfill gas, the methane-rich gases produced when bacteria consume organic waste in landfills and animal manure pits. It offers a cheaper, more abundant feedstock for making biofuels.
There is a well-known way to produce convert greenhouse gases into drop-in fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. Called Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS), the method relies on catalysts to convert syngas—a mix of carbon monoxide and hydrogen—into hydrocarbon molecules that are found in liquid fuels.
The synthesis process is energy-intensive because it requires high-temperature heat. Low-temperature FTS over cobalt-based catalysts produces a higher share of waxy hydrocarbons as opposed to liquids.
So the researchers developed a hybrid catalyst by combining cobalt with zeolite, common aluminum-and-silica minerals that have a porous structure. They fine-tuned the structure of the catalyst particles at the microscopic level so that the cobalt and zirconia atoms are close to each other. This boosted the production of liquid fuels over waxy products, increasing overall efficiency of the process. In tests, the catalyst selectively produced more than 79% liquid hydrocarbons in 900-hour runs.
For the reactor, the researchers came up with a microchannel design composed of alternating layers of catalyst and coolant channels. This allows the large amounts of heat generated during the chemical reaction to quickly be removed so that the catalyst is not destroyed. Because of the integrated design, the reactor has a smaller footprint compared to conventional systems.
Source: SeongWoo Jeong et al. Comprehensive study of cobalt-based hybrid catalysts for selective liquid fuel production via Fischer–Tropsch synthesis. Fuel, 2026.
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