Avina Clean Hydrogen will invest $820 million in the development of a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production facility in Southwest Illinois. Leveraging KBR’s alcohol-to-jet technology, the facility will produce up to 120 million gallons of ASTM-certified SAF annually.

The facility is expected to prevent 25 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually over its operational lifespan.The new facility will take advantage of Southwest Illinois’ existing rail and pipeline infrastructure, enabling efficient delivery of SAF to major airports in the Midwest, including Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

With its commitment to investing $820 million and creating 157 jobs Avina Clean Hydrogen will receive Reimagining Energy and Vehicles (REV) incentives from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO). REV provides competitive incentives for manufacturers across EV and renewables sectors to expand in or move to Illinois.

This project also aligns with the Illinois 2024 Economic Growth Plan, which prioritizes clean energy production and sustainable manufacturing as key drivers of Illinois’ economic future.

PureSAF Technology, invented by Swedish Biofuels AB and exclusively licensed by KBR, extends the range of alcohols to include any from ethanol, propanol, butanol and pentanol in the Alcohol-to-Jet (ATJ) route. These alcohols serve as feedstock, either as individual alcohols or a mixture of alcohols, for SAF production.

The process also includes the synthesis of aromatics, resulting in advanced SAF called synthetic kerosene with aromatics (ATJ-SKA). This SAF contains the same groups of hydrocarbons as those found in petroleum-derived aviation turbine fuels—i.e., normal paraffins, isoparaffins, monocyclic paraffins, dicyclic paraffins, alkylbenzenes and mono aromatics. The resulting SAF very closely resembles jet fuel derived from petroleum with the same or better physical-chemical properties.

The PureSAF process begins with a dehydration of the individual alcohols, namely, ethanol, propanol, butanol, pentanol, or their mixtures to a mixture of the corresponding olefins, which are, in subsequent stages, oligomerized to higher olefins. The higher olefins are saturated to yield the corresponding paraffin. Optionally, a portion of the higher olefins are condensed into aromatics for blending with the final product. The mixed hydrocarbon product stream is separated into gasoline, kerosene, and diesel by rectification.