Somewhere near Virginia City. The sun sets blood-red over the Nevada desert. A wind kicks up the dust along a broken rail spur. Inside the Old SAF Hotel—half saloon, half mirage—the lamps flicker as the dealer fans a fresh deck. At the felt-covered table, the chairs are full tonight. There’s Wyatt Earp, eyes sharp as […]
By Sam A. Rushing, President, Advanced Cryogenics, Ltd. Special to The Digest By far, cryogenic freezing of food products is the hallmark of low temperature applications for the commodity. My personal experience with respect to low temperature applications for the commodity have been the lion’s share of the merchant work, in the past with the […]
Demand for Sustainable, Affordable, Reliable, Available (SARA) feedstock is sky-high, especially for SAF, but it’s tough to find. Competition and pushback exist for conventional crops, necessitating more residues, like forest waste. Positively, new technologies for waste-to-fuels and intermediate crops are arriving, with new crops becoming available and marginal lands being utilized. The 2023 Billion-Ton Report […]
Green hydrogen stands at a crossroads—hailed as a linchpin of the low-carbon future, yet caught in a double bind between stunning technical progress and the stubborn realities of implementation. Shanghai Electric just delivered its first barrels of green methanol at a wind-and-biomass facility hailed as a world first. Envision Energy is ramping up to 320,000 […]
Consumer demand for biobased materials is strong, and innovation is rampant with first commercial products becoming more common. Chemicals and materials offer higher margins suitable for early-stage companies. However, the sector faces significant headwinds, including a lack of mandates or tax credits, immature capital markets, slow adoption by formulators, high costs, and scarce production capacity. […]
Hard-to-electrify industries require green carbon via REcarbonization, with biomass a sustainable source. Green syngas from lignocellulosic biomass through gasification and pyrolysis is a platform chemical for Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF), Green Methanol, and Green Hydrogen. Challenges include scaling FT SAF via green syngas economically/technically, high CAPEX for methanol, and complex biomass pre-treatment and syngas cleanup […]
In the old story, a scrawny farm boy traded the family cow for a handful of magic beans—and woke to find a beanstalk clawing at the clouds. In the modern version, those beans are billions of dollars in SAF investments, audacious policy mandates, and blockchain platforms curling skyward in defiance of gravity. But the giant—the […]
Global planned RD/SAF capacity is rising, supported by international mandates like RFS and ReFuelEU Aviation, with accelerating deployment and diverse technologies. Feedstock is generally affordable and available. Major headwinds include slower adoption than goals, a “mandate lite” market, and forecast confusion. A significant headwind is “cost hysteria,” as SAF is much more expensive, with Spanish […]
By Dr. Qi Chen, Pete Rocha, LEC Partners Special to The Digest While the electrification of many industrial sectors is accelerating the energy transition, it is not a silver bullet that will get us to net-zero economies. From aviation to cement, industries reliant on fossil based-carbon need a sustainable substitute—not just to meet climate targets […]
If you had the keys to America’s first commercial SAF refinery, how would you play it? Welcome, new Sheriff in town. You’re not just acquiring some sleepy old plant. You’re stepping into the long, layered saga of the Paramount Sustainable Fuels Facility—a place whose ownership story is less a deed than a palimpsest. In 2018, […]
