ASTM qualification for methanol as ATJ pathway creates opportunities
In Germany, more than 23,000 large aircraft worldwide consume approximately 350 billion liters of fuel annually and account for about 3 percent of human-caused CO2 emissions. For long-haul flights over 4,000 km in particular, there is no alternative to liquid fuels, as only these provide a sufficiently high energy density. The development of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) has now reached an important milestone: Following successful qualification by the international standardization organization ASTM, methanol has been recognized as an approved feedstock for the alcohol-to-jet production pathway. This means that in the future, methanol-to-jet blending components can be produced and mixed with at least 50 percent by volume of conventional kerosene to create a “drop-in” fuel—one that is fully compatible and can be used without any modifications to aircraft, engines, or existing infrastructure.
This decision marks a significant milestone for the “SAFari” collaborative project, which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Transportation. It was published on July 30, 2026, with the revision of the international specification ASTM D7566 Annex 5. The project aims to develop an efficient production process for sustainable aviation fuel based on methanol, thereby providing another technological building block for the decarbonization of aviation.
Throughout the multi-year project, the project partners closely supported the ASTM qualification process as members of the Methanol-to-Jet Task Force. The findings from the evaluation process were thus incorporated into the project work at an early stage and taken into account in the development of the production process. In this context, the early assessment of fuel quality was a key indicator of the project’s success. Since only small quantities of fuel were initially available during this development phase, the prescreening method developed at the DLR Institute of Combustion Technology was employed. It enables a comprehensive evaluation of fuel quality even with small sample quantities and provides an early assessment of whether a fuel meets the requirements of the ASTM specification. The results were immediately incorporated into process and catalyst development and helped ensure that the methanol-to-jet (MTJ) blending components developed in the project were specifically tailored to meet the anticipated international specification requirements.
Category: Research
