Aerobrew demonstration plant inaugurated at PSI in Switzerland

Photo: Paul Scherrer Institute

The Aerobrew demonstration plant, a joint sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) project of the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland and Zurich-based Metafuels, was officially inaugurated Aug. 20 on the PSI campus.

Here the production of SAF is being tested and prepared for commercialization—synthetic kerosene manufactured in what PSI said is “an exceptionally efficient way.”

From water, renewable electricity and carbon dioxide from sustainable sources, high-quality, climate-neutral aviation fuel is to be created.

This is the goal of researchers at PSI in collaboration with Metafuels.

The Aug. 20 inauguration ceremony of the Aerobrew demonstration plant on the PSI campus brought more than 150 guests from science, politics, industry and the energy sector.

With the new demonstration plant, the emerging technology is now being operated for the first time in an industrially relevant plant design.

This is a novel catalytic process for producing electro SAF that PSI researchers and the Metafuels team jointly developed and patented.

The project combines scientific research with industrial development in a targeted way to transform new findings into practical applications.

“At PSI, we conduct research for society,” said PSI Director Christian Rüegg. “The energy transition is one of the major challenges we are currently facing. The inauguration of the Aerobrew demonstration plant is an important milestone on the path to more sustainable aviation. We are proud that our cutting-edge research is making a crucial contribution to this step towards industrial production.”

From green methanol to sustainable fuel

“We have successfully developed Aerobrew together with Metafuels on a laboratory scale,” said Marco Ranocchiari, a researcher at the PSI Center for Energy and Environmental Sciences, who leads PSI’s involvement in the Aerobrew project. “With our demonstration plant, we are now testing the process under real-world conditions. This will allow us to further optimize the technology and create the conditions for industrial production.”

The new plant at PSI is designed to produce 50 liters (13.2 gallons) of SAF per day.

It is the world’s first facility to combine all the production steps for synthesizing aviation fuel from methanol under one roof, according to PSI.

“International travel and global supply chains will continue to depend on air transport,” said Saurabh Kapoor, co-founder and CEO of Metafuels. “That’s why we have developed a product that can be integrated into existing airport infrastructure and used in conventional jet engines, while at the same time significantly reducing climate-damaging emissions.”

Metafuels plans to bring the first commercial plant for production of SAF using the Aerobrew technology into operation starting in 2030.

The Aerobrew process requires no fossil fuels and achieves higher selectivity—a better yield-to-revenue ratio—compared to previously used production methods for SAF, according to PSI.

The source materials are water, from which hydrogen is produced using sustainable electricity, and carbon dioxide.

The latter can in the short term be sourced from biogenic sources such as wood or plant waste, and in the long term directly from the atmosphere.

Hydrogen and carbon dioxide are processed into green methanol.

Finally, the Aerobrew technology comes into play by generating sustainable kerosene from the green methanol.