During a Joint Services Open House at the base on 20 and 21 may, two Thunderbird aircraft will perform using a 50/50 blend of Honeywell Green Jet Fuel made from camelina and petroleum-based jet fuel. Camelina, grown and harvested for the Air Force by Sustainable Oils LLC, is an inedible, second-generation plant source for biofuels that does not deplete valuable food, land or water resources. This event will mark the first use of an alternative fuel blend by an air demonstration team.

To date the Air Force has fully certified Honeywell Green Jet fuel on the C-17 Globemaster III the F-16 and successfully demonstrated the fuel on the A-10 Thunderbolt, the F-15 Eagle and the F-22 Raptor platforms.

Honeywell UOP produced 400,000 gallons of Green Jet Fuel from sustainable, non-food sources for the Air Force as part of a joint program for the US Defense Logistics Agency – Energy (DLA-E) for alternative fuels testing and certification. The final fuel delivery under this program took place in early May 2011.

The Air Force held its first demonstration flight with Honeywell Green Jet Fuel in an A-10 Thunderbolt II in March 2010. It expects to achieve fleet-wide certification by 2013.

Honeywell UOP was the prime contractor or subcontractor on DLA-E contracts to produce almost 600,000 gallons of renewable jet fuel for the US Navy and Air Force in October 2009. Working with feedstock partners Sustainable Oils, Solazyme and Cargill, Honeywell UOP process technology was used to produce 190,000 gallons of fuel for the Navy and 400,000 gallons for the Air Force from animal fats, algae and camelina.

Honeywell UOP’s Green Jet Fuel process technology was originally developed in 2007 under a contract from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to produce renewable military jet fuel for the US military. The process is based on hydroprocessing technology commonly used in today’s refineries to produce transportation fuels. It produces an aviation biofuel that can be blended seamlessly with petroleum-based fuel. When used as part of as much as a 50 percent blend with petroleum-derived jet fuel, Green Jet Fuel is a drop-in replacement that requires no changes to the aircraft technology and meets all critical specifications for flight.

In addition to its Green Jet Fuel process technology, the company has commercialized the UOP/Eni Ecofining process to produce Honeywell Green Diesel from biological feedstocks. It has also a joint venture with Ensyn Corp. in Envergent Technologies LLC, which offers pyrolysis technology for the production of renewable heat, power and transportation fuels.