Reducing Aviation Emissions with Biofuels in BioRGAS Project

GTI Energy is leading a project to help scale-up technologies that will expand the production and use of low-carbon sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) while reducing costs and minimizing equipment size.

The R-GAS™ Advanced Gasification Pre-Pilot Demonstration for Biofuels (BioRGAS) project will demonstrate that aviation fuel, diesel, or marine fuel can be produced economically at commercial scale from biomass through entrained flow gasification. A reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of greater than 70% over the petroleum derived equivalent is anticipated.

The U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office has granted nearly $4 million in funding to help put the aviation sector on a pathway to full decarbonization by 2050, and LCRI will provide additional financial support for demonstrating this large-scale conversion technology to minimize greenhouse gas emissions.

The project has successfully demonstrated the pre-processing and reliable feeding of torrefied biomass feedstocks into the R-GAS pilot entrained flow gasifier at the GTI Energy campus in Des Plaines, IL. The next phase of the project will involve the actual feedstock gasification to generate data for scale-up modeling and a detailed technoeconomic and lifecycle analysis on a commercial plant.