ARC Bio demonstrates Canadian forest-residue pathway to sustainable aviation fuel
ARC Bio, the Canadian joint venture between an affiliate of Bioénergie AE Cote-Nord Canada Inc. and Alder Renewables, announced Sept. 30 the successful demonstration of a pathway to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) from Canadian forest residues through refinery coprocessing.
The demonstration brings together Canada’s forest-products industry, renewable fuels technology and existing refining infrastructure to show how residual woody biomass can be converted into a refinery-ready biocrude for processing alongside conventional feedstocks to produce transportation fuels, including SAF.
“Canada has the biomass feedstock, the forest sector expertise, the industrial capability and the refining infrastructure to build an important new clean-fuel value chain,” said Serge Mercier, the president of Bioénergie AECN. “This work creates a direct connection between Canada’s forest-sector economy and the growing need for low-carbon fuels in aviation and marine transportation markets.”
The project upgraded fast-pyrolysis bio-oil produced from Canadian forest residues by Bioénergie AECN in Port-Cartier, Quebec, into barrel-scale quantities of Alder Renewable Crude.
This biocrude was then processed in a fluid-catalytic cracking (FCC) pilot unit that simulates commercial-refinery operation.
Carbon-14 analysis of the resulting fuel products confirmed the presence of biogenic carbon from the wood residue-derived feedstock.
The FCC campaign successfully produced a jet-range fuel fraction that was isolated and evaluated for blending compatibility with hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids (HEFA)-based SAF produced from fats, oils and greases.
The resulting SAF blend met the key ASTM D1655 fuel-property specifications evaluated in the screening.
The work represents an important step toward demonstrating that biocrude produced from Canadian forest residues can enter existing refinery infrastructure and be converted into finished transportation fuels.
“The significance of this demonstration is not simply that we produced a renewable jet-range fuel,” said Derek Vardon, CEO of Alder Renewables. “We demonstrated a pathway connecting Canadian forest residues with refinery infrastructure already operating at commercial scale. That creates the potential for a scalable, capital-efficient route to bring forest-derived renewable carbon into aviation-fuel markets.”
With financial support from Boeing, the project was established to validate the conversion of forest residues into SAF in Canada and generate the technical and economic data needed to support future commercial-scale facilities.
New market opportunity for Canada’s forest sector
Canada’s forest industry generates large volumes of wood residues.
As traditional markets face changing demand and international-trade pressures, creating higher-value uses for these residues can strengthen forest-sector economics while supplying renewable carbon to industries that are difficult to decarbonize.
The project also demonstrates opportunities to create value from low-value woody biomass, including forest residues generated through forest management and wildfire-risk reduction, where appropriate feedstock supply chains can be established.
By converting these materials into an energy-dense, transportable biocrude, ARC Bio is developing a model that connects distributed forestry resources with large-scale fuel-refining infrastructure.
Leveraging refinery infrastructure already in place
Unlike pathways requiring an entirely new standalone fuel refinery, ARC Bio’s approach is designed to integrate with existing refinery operations.
FCC is widely used in refineries around the world to produce transportation-fuel components.
Introducing Alder Renewable Crude into an FCC process creates a pathway connecting renewable feedstocks with existing commercial fuel-production assets.
The next stage of the program will generate additional refinery-relevant data to support larger-scale trials.
ARC Bio’s roadmap is ultimately aimed at enabling a first-of-a-kind Canadian commercial project combining forest-residue conversion, biocrude production and refinery integration.
