Sustainable pilot‐scale production of a Salicornia oil, its conversion to certified aviation fuel, and techno‐economic analysis of the related biorefinery

Abstract

The 2 ha pilot-plant Seawater Energy and Agriculture System (SEAS) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE), integrates aquaculture ponds, which produce fish and shrimp, with fields of Salicornia and mangrove used as a natural filter to clean the waste seawater from the ponds. The SEAS is a sustainable solution that addresses the food security issues of countries with large deserts or arid regions. At the same time, it produces economically viable fuels from biomass, using non-arable lands and non-drinkable water. After harvesting and pressing Salicornia seeds (2 t ha −1 year −1 ), a custom-made process serves to pretreat the vegetable oil (0.7 t ha −1 year −1 ) containing 85 wt% C 18 and 10 wt% C 16 fatty acids as triglycerides. The first step of the UOP Ecofining ® process produces an oil composed of linear C 15 -C 18 alkanes. Analytical data suggest the oil feed converts at 60 wt% by hydrodeoxygenation and at 40 wt% through decarboxylation/decarbonylation. The subsequent hydrocracking/isomerization step provided 3.4 wt% C 1 -C 4 , 34.8 wt% green naphtha, 47.5 wt% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), and 14.2 wt% green diesel. After distillation, the SAF has been certified following ASTM D7566 before being blended with conventional jet fuel and used successfully on a commercial passenger flight in January 2019. The techno-economic study shows that the biorefinery part is economically sustainable when reaching a production scale of 900bbd, required for a SEAS surface of 20 000 ha. At this scale, expected revenue and conversion costs per MT of

From salt pan to saucepan: Salicornia, a halophytic vegetable with an array of potential health benefits

“…In the UAE, widely available non‐arable lands are utilized for large‐scale Salicornia commercial cultivation, which is strongly supported by the research and development activities of the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture, Dubai (ICBA, 2019). Moreover, the UAE achieved incredible success with Salicornia as it became the first country that used aviation fuel developed from Salicornia seed oil to fly a commercial passenger flight (Etihad Airways Boeing 787, from Abu Dhabi to Amsterdam) in 2019 (Kumar et al., 2018; Laveille et al., 2021). Apart from the UAE, other Middle East countries have turned their attention to step into saline agriculture.…”

Electrifying the production of sustainable aviation fuel: the risks, economics, and environmental benefits of emerging pathways including CO2

“…While numerous TEA and LCA reports on SAF have been published previously, many focus on single conversion technologies and/or involve only biomass, FOG, or MSW feedstocks. [11][12][13][14][15][16][17] With P2L CO 2 -derived SAF expected to comprise 450% of future global SAF supply, end-to-end analyses for P2L CO 2 -to-SAF conversion with renewable electricity are critically needed and are largely absent in the current literature. A notable exception is the work of Schmidt et al, in which P2L CO 2 conversion through existing methanol-to-olefins (MTO) and FT pathways was studied.…”