- Plastic waste can now be converted directly into usable jet fuel
- A tandem reactor system breaks down plastic at 460 degrees Celsius
- Ruthenium catalyst sites provided far better selectivity than commercial alternatives
Researchers at Nanjing Forestry University and Tsinghua University have demonstrated a new method to turn plastic waste directly into usable jet fuel, with estimated production costs of between $1.0 to $1.8 per kilogram.
The work comes as airlines, governments and fuel manufacturers continue to search for alternatives that can reduce reliance on conventional fossil-derived jet fuel.
While the technology remains in development, the researchers say their approach combines favorable fuel properties with economics that appear to be competitive on paper.
New reactor design turns waste plastic into jet fuel
The study, published in Natural energyshows a tandem reactor system using hydropyrolysis and hydrogenolysis can convert plastic waste into hydrocarbons in the jet fuel range.
The researchers note that plastic material first enters a reactor operating at 460 °C, where it is broken down into smaller molecular compounds.
These intermediates then pass into a second stage operating at 160 °C, where a specially designed catalyst converts them into cycloalkane-rich jet fuel suitable for further evaluation.
Professors Yadong Li and Dingsheng Wang explained that managing the final product mix had long been a challenge in plastics conversion research.
“The problem that kept holding us back was selectivity,” they said, noting that conventional approaches often produce broad and difficult-to-control distributions of chemical products.
The team concentrated on atomically dispersed ruthenium, or Ru, sites supported by cobalt-alumina materials.
After evaluating several catalyst configurations, they found that isolated Ru sites provided significantly different reaction behavior compared to conventional alternatives.
They reported that the catalyst achieved hydrogenation performance more than 100 times greater than a commercial Ru/C catalyst during a key processing step.
Economy and sustainability claims attract attention
The study comes amid continued efforts to expand sustainable jet fuel production as airlines face pressure to lower emissions.
Aviation remains one of the more difficult sectors to decarbonize because aircraft require energy-dense liquid fuels that can operate under demanding flight conditions.
The group also reported successful gram-scale catalyst fabrication and testing, while stating that both the catalyst fabrication and hydrogenation processes appear capable of further scaling.
The researchers said the resulting fuel showed attractive performance characteristics while also offering potentially favorable economics.
“A techno-economic analysis put the competitive minimum selling price at $1.0-1.8 per kilogram,” Li and Wang said, describing the estimate as competitive.
By comparison, conventional fossil-based jet fuel currently costs about $1.00-$1.30 per kilogram, although prices change with global oil markets and refinery conditions.
Given the volatility associated with global oil markets, the conflict in Iran and tensions across other oil-producing regions, a price-competitive alternative is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
Future work will focus on production of kilogram-scale catalysts and continuous feed systems to improve operational efficiency.
Via Techxplore
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