Australian-made green plane fuel closer with grant win

The innovative project, undertaken at the University of NSW, has won a $1.2 million grant to progress the technology and scientists say a prototype could be as little as six months from launch.

The announcement on Thursday comes amid increasing demand for sustainable aviation fuel in Australia and worldwide and follows the launch of several multimillion-dollar projects designed to turn waste into jet fuel.

Sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, is typically made from agricultural waste such as sugarcane, tallow, canola and cooking oils and can reduce emissions from aircraft by 80 per cent compared to traditional jet fuel.

But the UNSW project deploys an electrolyser that uses low-cost metals, carbon catalysts and renewable energy to turn carbon dioxide and water into fuel precursors.

The approach could cut out the need for farm waste and make environmentally friendly fuel easier to produce at scale, project leader Rahman Daiyan said.

"Most of the work so far has been on bio-based sustainable aviation fuel projects," he told AAP.

"But those sort of biomass resources are limited to some extent."

The Trailblazer for Recycling and Clean Energy program, established by the federal education department, has awarded the UNSW research team an additional $1.2 million to scale up its technology.

While the electrolyser has been proven to work in a lab, Dr Daiyan said a validated prototype would be ready within six to nine months, and the project would be commercialised with industry partners Tjindu Power and Chinese energy firm Chuangqi Times.

If successful, he said, the project could help to realise Australian ambitions to become a green fuel exporter.

"One of the best aspects of this technology is that it allows us to leverage Australia's potential – we want to be a hydrogen exporter or a low-carbon fuel exporter," Dr Daiyan said.

"There is domestic demand but there is also overseas demand because apart from Singapore and Malaysia there are not a lot of places to make SAF for the Asia Pacific region."

Sustainable aviation fuel is considered to be one of the leading ways to reduce carbon emission from air travel and is in high demand worldwide after major airlines committed to using the fuel to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

A report by the CSIRO and aircraft maker Boeing, released in November, found Australia could lead the world in production of the sustainable fuel but warned it had made only moderate progress so far.

Sustainable aviation fuel projects are under way in Queensland and Western Australia, including a refinery planned by Wagner Sustainable Fuels and plans to transform BP's Kwinana Energy Hub in Western Australia.

Australian Associated Press