World’s 1st pilot facility converts nonrecyclable waste plastic to aviation fuel
- Clean Planet Group
- 4 minutes ago
- 3 min read
A major breakthrough in tackling both waste plastic and aviation emissions has been marked with the opening of the world’s first waste plastics to sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) pilot facility.
Dedicated to converting hard-to-recycle waste plastics into SAF, the new Sustainability Innovation Centre is based at Discovery Park in Sandwich, England, and is operated by Clean Planet Technologies.
The center is set up to research and develop new technologies to deal with nonrecyclable plastic waste, beginning with conversion into jet fuel.
The U.K. creates 5 million metric tons of waste plastics each year, 80 percent of which cannot be recycled such as carrier bags and food-packaging film.
Globally the world’s commercial aircraft consume between 7 million and 8 million barrels of jet fuel per day, equivalent to 7 percent to 8 percent of total global daily oil demand.
“Our process first heats the waste plastic with a chemical reaction to turn it into a liquid, rather than burning it,” said Andrew Odjo, the CEO of Clean Planet Technologies. “This is then treated with our patented process to remove impurities and create SAF that meets stringent commercial aviation specifications. Every day, 100,000 commercial flights fly globally. At the same time, 600,000 tons of nonrecyclable waste plastics enter the environment globally. Our pilot facility will demonstrate this waste can be turned into a premium product with a quantifiable commercial demand, as well as reducing the lifecycle carbon footprint of the aviation industry. We monitor how much energy the process uses, and overall, it cuts the lifecycle greenhouse-gas emissions by more than 70 percent compared to traditional fossil jet fuel. With currently less than 1 percent of global aviation fuel produced from sustainable sources, the scale of the environmental opportunity presented by our technology means the opening of our facility is an important step towards the U.K.’s ambition to support sustainable aviation.”
The pilot facility plays a critical role in bridging innovation and commercial development, according to Clean Planet Technologies, integrating several stages into one single, controlled system optimized to transform hard-to-recycle plastics into SAF.
It has been designed to support fuel and feedstock testing, validation and progression through the ASTM qualification process, with financial support already in place from the Department for Transport-funded U.K. SAF clearinghouse.
“The Sustainability Innovation Centre is set up to demonstrate our patented waste-plastics-to-SAF process at pilot scale, supporting fuel testing, validation and progression,” said Katerina Garyfalou, Clean Planet Technologies’ chief operating officer. “The important thing is that our pilot facility will support the growth of others, helping the U.K. to meet its SAF mandate. U.K. government policy to decarbonize aviation fuel states that 2 percent of U.K. jet-fuel demand must be SAF, increasing to 10 percent in 2030 and 22 percent in 2040.”
The key steps of the process are:
Shredding—waste plastics are preprocessed and shredded to a uniform size.
Pyrolysis—the material is fed into one of the center’s two pyrolysis units, with the largest capable of processing up to 1 ton of plastic per day. In this oxygen-free environment, the plastics are thermocatalytically converted into a synthetic crude oil. This melts the plastic, rather than burning it.
Purification—impurities and contaminants in the synthetic crude oil are removed.
Distillation—the pyrolysis oil is transferred to a distillation unit, where it is separated into relevant fractions and optimized for upgrading into higher-value fuels.
Upgrading—the fractions are then processed through Clean Planet Technologies’ patented hydroprocessing system, which uses hydrogen to further remove impurities, and transforms the properties of the product to meet stringent SAF specifications.
SAF product—the resulting ultra-clean, ultra-low sulfur fuel suitable for aviation use is sent for testing, blending and evaluation as part of the ASTM qualification pathway as SAF.
The fundamentals of the process (pyrolysis, purification, distillation and hydroprocessing) are all technologies that are currently used independently at commercial scale, meaning scaling up the process is not a challenge, according to Clean Planet Technologies.
Clean Planet Group was founded in 2018 by Odjo, Adel Louertatani, Bertie Stephens and Fernando Diamond.
“Our pilot facility addresses two strategic challenges simultaneously—plastic-waste management and aviation decarbonization,” Stephens said. “By converting nonrecyclable plastics—materials that would otherwise have gone to landfill or been incinerated—into low-carbon aviation fuel, the facility supports both circular-economy objectives and the reduction of lifecycle greenhouse-gas emissions.”
This pilot opens up new ways to make SAF, Clean Planet Technologies stated, while positioning the U.K. as a leader in turning waste plastics into SAF.
