Properties of Selected Alternative Petroleum Fractions and Sustainable Aviation Fuels

Abstract

With regard to speed, comfort, and a dense network of destinations, the popularity of air transport is on the rise. For this reason, jet fuel is a commodity with rapidly growing consumption and interesting refinery margins. At the same time, however, it is becoming a focus of attention in terms of reducing negative environmental impacts. As a response to these trends, it will be necessary to coprocess alternative petroleum fractions with sustainable aviation components in oil refineries. Six alternative jet fuel samples of different origin were used to investigate their jet fuel-specific properties, that is, aromatics (from 0 to 59.7 vol%), smoke point (from 12.2 to >50 mm), freezing point (from −49 to <−80 °C) and net specific energy (41.2–43.7 MJ·kg−1), and these properties were compared to standard hydrotreated straight-run Jet A-1 kerosene. The properties of the components studied differed significantly with respect to each other and to the requirements of Jet A-1. Nevertheless, the properties could be well correlated. This provides an opportunity to study possible synergies in blending these components. It was also found that the current methods and instruments used do not always allow a precise determination of the smoke point (>50 mm) and freezing point (<80 °C).

The Prokaryotic Microalga Limnothrix redekei KNUA012 to Improve Aldehyde Decarbonylase Expression for Use as a Biological Resource

“…Characterization of heterologous AD expression in E. coli. Microalgae can produce straight-chain alkanes/alkenes from fatty acyl-ACP via the alkane biosynthesis pathway using the enzymes AAR and AD (Tillman et al 1999;Hayashi et al 2015;Kudo et al 2019;Kittel et al 2023). AAR reduces fatty acyl-ACP to fatty aldehyde, which is reduced to alkanes/alkenes by AD.…”

“…The primary commercial source of alkanes is petroleum. Petroleum-derived alkanes contain 13–20 carbons and are used as transport fuels, e.g., gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel ( Marsh and Waugh 2013 ; Kittel et al 2023 ). Recent studies have revealed that microalgae can synthesize alkanes.…”

Machine Learning for High Energy Density Hydrocarbons for Sustainable Aviation Fuel

“…S3. The majority of PCHCs in SAFCand(P, Q) align with currently available hydrotreated esters and fatty acids (HEFA) SAFs, which usually contain C9-C16 carbons [43], and SAFs hydrocarbons produced from biomass or other waste in the range of C8-C18 [44]. Although squalane (C30H62), a saturated hydrocarbon with an IUPAC name of 2,6,10,15,19,23-hexamethyltetracosane, is a liquid hydrocarbon with up to 30 carbon atoms, the majority of liquid hydrocarbons under ambient temperature do not exceed 17 carbon atoms, whereas the number of hydrogens of the potential PCHCs ranges from H6 to H24, as shown in Fig.…”