Nacero to pivot Texas facility to produce low-carbon aviation fuel

Nacero said it will pivot from producing low-carbon gasoline to sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) or low-carbon aviation fuel (LCAF) at its facility in Pennwell, Texas, U.S.A., which is already in the pre-construction phase. The multi-billion dollar facility was initially planned to produce 100,000 barrels per day of gasoline blendstock using natural gas that is currently vented or flared.

When fully completed, Nacero’s facility in Texas will be the largest commercial scale facility in the U.S. for producing sustainable aviation fuel or low-carbon aviation fuel.

Nacero said it plans to produce SAF and LCAF from renewable natural gas (RNG) sourced from dairy farms and landfills, and from mitigated flared gas sourced in the Permian Basin, using TOPSOE’s MTJet™ technology.

The SAF and LCAF products, which will contain no sulfur, will be produced using 100%, low-cost renewable power. In addition, carbon capture is integrated within the process. As a result, the facility will be able to supply the aviation industry a lower carbon solution for everyday jet fuel at an affordable price and with up to a 100% reduction in its lifecycle carbon footprint, according to Nacero.

“At Nacero, we recognise the need to address climate change and decarbonise all sectors, yet we believe that we can make the greatest impact by helping to reduce carbon produced from air travel,” said Nacero’s CEO and Chairman, Bruce Selkirk.

“The airline industry and U.S. government agencies have pledged significant carbon reduction targets to be achieved by 2030 and 2050 which presently appear to be challenging to meet with current technologies and limited feedstocks. By transitioning our facilities to SAF and LCAF, we believe we can make a significant contribution to meeting these goals while at the same time offering a product to the aviation industry that is cost competitive to traditional jet fuel.”

“Topsoe fully supports Nacero’s decision to shift its focus to SAF and LCAF production given the challenge of meeting 2030 and 2050 consumption goals of renewable jet fuel. We have been working very closely with Nacero’s experienced project team to implement Topsoe NG to gasoline process (TIGAS™) and we are very excited about the opportunity to continue this successful collaboration while building a scalable solution to meet the world’s growing demand for SAF and LCAF,” said Henrik Rasmussen, Topsoe’s managing director, The Americas.

Nacero will leverage the already completed project development work, site permitting, and extensive engineering and construction planning for the earlier proposed TIGAS™ gasoline project. This work will be updated by TOPSOE and Nacero, with minimal design modifications required, to enable utilisation of the very similar MTJet™ process. The already completed engineering and construction planning work remains unchanged and is completely compatible as designed with TOPSOE’s MTJet™ process. This includes TOPSOE’s proprietary processes, catalysts, and equipment designs for their SynCOR Methanol™ technology as well as integrated carbon capture technology provided by Giammarco Vetrocoke. Leveraging this previous work enables and achieves significant schedule advantages for the joint development effort to achieve commercialisation of SAF production, the company said.