Low-carbon aviation fuels must be developed to help the UK to transition to a low carbon future, whilst meeting security of energy supply. This multidisciplinary proposal unites leading engineers and scientists from the Universities of Heriot-Watt, Aston, Oxford and University of Edinburgh to realise our vision of production of low carbon jet fuels through the integration of novel technologies for co-valorisation of carbon dioxide (CO2) and biomass. Our project aims to produce low carbon synthetic aviation jet fuel using renewable energy from waste agricultural and forestry biomass and captured CO2. An integrated chemistry (bottom-up method to develop novel catalysts and electrodes) and engineering (top-down method to tailor heat and mass transport parameters influencing reaction conditions) approach will be implemented towards high selective and efficient jet fuel production. Process integration and life cycle analysis will be performed by incorporating the newly developed process into a greater domain (e.g. various options of carbon sources), and to investigate the social/political/economic valuation of the biomass and CO2 to jet fuel value added chain.

The gasification of biomass wastes represents a major thermochemical route to produce a high energy value syngas from a source which is renewable and CO2-neutral. However, one of the major issues in the gasification process is contamination of the product syngas with tar. Tar is the key problem for biomass gasification and is a complex mixture of condensable hydrocarbons. The formation of tar causes major process and syngas end-use problems, including tar blockages, plugging and corrosion in downstream fuel lines, filters, engine nozzles and turbines. This proposal seeks to develop a novel gas cleaning process based on low temperature plasma/catalytic technology to produce a clean, high quality syngas from the gasification of waste biomass. Gasification of the biomass will be investigated in an existing small-pilot scale fluidised bed gasifier, modified to include a downstream plasma/catalytic syngas cleaning process. Experimental and detailed analytical work developing the coupled biomass gasification-gas cleaning process will enable a mechanistic understanding of the tar reduction process and will be extended by CFD modelling of model tar compounds. Process modelling and simulation of the combined biomass gasification-plasma/catalytic gas clean-up sytem will build a foundation for process analysis, optimal design and operation to facilitate exploitation of this innovative technology development.