RECIFE — The German Technical Cooperation Agency GIZ and the International Center for Renewable Energies (CIBiogás) last week announced a pilot plant for the production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) from biogas and green hydrogen in Foz do Iguaçu, Paraná.

Expected to start operating in mid-2023, the project has investments in the order of R$ 9 million. The production will be on a laboratory scale, but the proposal is to develop a model that can gain scale and have the processes replicated.

Another product of the pilot biorefinery will be renewable synthetic oil.

"Since the entire Brazilian territory has availability of residual biomass, the solution proposed by the project can be replicated throughout the country, offering an opportunity for the decentralized production of carbon-neutral fuels," says Markus Francke, director of GIZ's H2Brasil project.

For the executive, Brazil can present itself as a leader in the energy transition.

A survey of rsb (roundtable on sustainable biomaterials) identified in Brazil a potential for production of up to 9 billion liters of APS from waste.

This is more than the national production of fossil kerosene. In 2019, before the covid-19 pandemic, Brazil produced just over 6 billion liters of petroleum kerosene, according to the ANP.

And Paraná is among the largest potential centers of biogas and biomethane production in the country, due to the influence of the agricultural industry on the economy.

The state's participation in the project will be extended with the partnership of the Araucaria Foundation, the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) and with the support of the Hydrogen Research Center of the Itaipu Technological Park (PTI) and Itaipu Binacional.

The PTI will house the pilot plant, and the expectation is that green hydrogen poles will be created in regions with surplus renewable energy and a new route for the energy use of biogas.

"Paraná has enormous possibilities to become a very important actor in the issues related to the production of green hydrogen from biomass," said Ramiro Wahrhaftig, president of the Araucaria Foundation.

According to GIZ, replacing carbon with the use of biogas, combining with green hydrogen, creates a new technological route for alternative energy sources —but there is still no estimate of competitiveness, or not, in relation to other SAF routes.

In technical terms, all aircraft using aviation kerosene (Jet-A or Jet-A1) can be supplied with biogas SAF in mixtures with fossil fuel.

Source: epbr