The Startup, Dimensional Energy, is Using Sunlight and Captured CO2 to Make Jet Fuel

We transform carbon dioxide into sustainable aviation fuel.

Dimensional Energy: in the next decade, this environmentally friendly fuel could be as cheap as fossil fuels

Seeing planes fueled by captured CO2 in 2022

Forget crude oil — a new source of jet fuel may be captured CO2 emissions.

Dimensional Energy, a startup based in New York, plans to use this new environmentally friendly jet fuel to conduct flight tests by 2022. “We remove the need for any sort of fossil fuel inputs,” says Jason Salfi, co-founder and CEO of Dimensional Energy.

The company’s tiny facility will be producing only around half a barrel of fuel a day. But the company plans to use the same process—with a large field of heliostats, which are mirrors that concentrate solar power—at a sizable scale.

In 2022, it hopes to get its sustainable aviation fuel certified for use and begin flight tests with a partner airline. The company is one of a handful of startups developing alternative jet fuels (LanzaTech, which turns steel-factory emissions into ethanol, is another).

The technology, which grew out of research at Cornell University, uses electrolysis to split water and produce hydrogen and then mixes the hydrogen and CO2 in its reactor to make syngas or synthetic gas—which can be converted into liquid fuel and then refined into jet fuel.

“The magic of our technology is where we integrate everything into one single stream,” he says. The tech makes it possible to make carbon monoxide, one component of the process, at a low cost and makes the resulting fuel cost-competitive. At scale, the company projects that the fuel could eventually cost less than $1 per gallon.

Right now, the captured CO2 comes from factories that produce greenhouse gas as a byproduct, like the cement industry. But as direct air capture technology scales up, it would be possible to use CO2 captured directly from the atmosphere.

“Our financial models show being able to have cost parity with fossil fuel-based jet fuel in the next decade,” says Salfi. It’s critical to get there if airlines are going to buy it.

Recycling CO2 into fuels – Dimensional Energy

“It’s going to be a struggle to get them to pay a premium for any meaningful amount of sustainable aviation fuel,” he says. “Even if they are paying a premium today, sustainable aviation fuel only makes up something like less than a tenth of a percent of the overall market. . . . [T]hey just won’t respond unless it’s in their pricing model. Companies like ours just have to get the prices down.”

At the moment, regulations limit the amount of synthetic fuel that planes can use, allowing a mix of up to 50%. That would still dramatically lower the carbon footprint of flights, but it’s possible that 100% sustainable aviation fuel may soon be allowed. The fuel could also eventually be used on hybrid aircraft that use fuel for energy-intensive takeoff, but then run-on electric power in the sky.

Sources: