LanzaTech Global and LanzaJet, Inc., a leading sustainable fuels technology company and fuels producer, announced a new project with Australia’s Wagner Sustainable Fuels to evaluate equipping Wagner’s Brisbane SAF Refinery with the CirculAir platform. The CirculAir platform is LanzaTech and LanzaJet’s joint technology solution that converts waste carbon and renewable power into Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF).

In addition to securing a commercial partnership with LanzaTech and LanzaJet, the project has received financial investments from The Boeing Company and the Queensland Government. The project is expected to generate a multitude of benefits, including creating jobs in Queensland, increasing domestic energy security for Australia, and helping reduce global greenhouse gas emissions from aviation.

The CirculAir process first utilizes LanzaTech’s carbon recycling technology to transform local waste streams, such as industrial emissions and municipal solid waste, into CarbonSmart ethanol. Then, LanzaJet’s Alcohol-to-Jet (ATJ) technology converts the ethanol into drop-in SAF.

The SAF made through this process will reduce aviation emissions by 85% to carbon negative.

The CirculAir platform was designed to accelerate decarbonization of the global aviation industry by utilizing a variety of locally sourced waste-based feedstocks to produce the SAF volumes needed to supplant fossil fuels.

Enhancing SAF production is critical for aviation to reduce its carbon footprint, as it is estimated that SAF will account for 65-70% of the emission reductions needed to meet the industry’s 2050 goal of net zero emissions.

Historic supply constraints, high costs, and technical barriers have made it difficult for the industry to default to SAF as the primary aviation fuel source. The CirculAir platform breaks down these barriers, as the technology is able to turn a wide range of waste-based feedstocks into SAF to meet demand. Widespread adoption is projected to accelerate the production and economies of scale necessary to bring down the global cost of SAF.