Cool GTL^SM A Pathway to Sustainable Fuels

GTI Energy developed and is demonstrating large-scale conversion technologies to produce sustainable fuels for aviation and ocean shipping from abundant waste carbon streams.

Our patented Cool GTL^SM process converts natural gas, RNG and CO₂ into high-quality liquid fuels efficiently and affordably. The technology uses innovative approaches in chemistry (catalysts), equipment (reactors), and process flows to reduce cost and shrink the size, enabling a scalable and economical solution.

Major advancements have been made to the Cool GTL^SM technology through U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and industrial partner support. Building on early-stage work initiated in 2016 under a DOE-funded gas-to-liquids program, the research team demonstrated sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) production in its integrated pilot plant line, producing 1.5 gallons of sustainable fuels per day.

To validate the process at a larger scale, GTI Energy lead a project to develop an integrated, fully automated pilot-scale test unit at our campus. With the support of DOE and Aether Fuels, the team built a 100 gallon-per-day (gpd) scale test unit to advance the technology.

In 2022, Aether and GTI Energy established a strategic partnership and executed an exclusive global technology license. Aether leveraged GTI Energy’s laboratory and demonstration spaces, co-locating their team to work alongside our experts to develop their proprietary Aether Aurora™ solution and accelerate its commercialization.

GTI Energy and Aether jointly demonstrated a tri-converter skid and successfully proved that it could continuously produce syngas at larger scales using various feedstocks, a breakthrough that can potentially shatter a key barrier to scaling production. This testing validated the tri-converter’s readiness for integration into a demo plant to produce more than one barrel per day of sustainable fuels.

Aether is a spin-out of Xora Innovation, a deep-tech early-stage investment platform of Temasek, and has raised more than $40 million in equity funding from venture capital investors. The company has signed MOU agreements with JetBlue and Singapore Airlines to supply SAF to meet the growing global demand.