Too good to be true? - Aviation fuel from sewage!

[C_Claycomb]

Saw this on BBC, then saw it was reported elsewhere much earlier.

Firm develops jet fuel made entirely from human poo

Scientists have found a way to make jet fuel from human sewage and cut carbon emissions.

www.bbc.co.uk

Bristol's Firefly creates aviation fuel from human sewage

Earlier this year, the airline Wizz Air announced a £5 million investment in Bristol-based biofuel company Firefly Green Fuels. Now the man behind Firefly, green entrepreneur James Hygate...

thebusinessmagazine.co.uk

Home - Firefly

flyfirefly.uk

Short version, a high pressure reactor is used to turn sewage sludge into a crude oil-like liquid that can be distilled just like fossil crude oil to produce something they say is almost indistinguishable from standard aviation kerosene.

Huge implications if it can be industrialised.

 

[nigelp]

Clever stuff.

 

[Pattree]

I saw that this morning.
Just from the innovation point of view it’s exciting.
Then my inner cynic kicked in!
I burn three tonnes of kerosene a year but I’m being told that I won’t be allowed to do that in a few years. I doubt that this will be developed any time soon

 

[Paul_B]

However aviation sector can burn it so perhaps it will be developed.

 

[TLM]

Huge implications if it can be industrialised.

It has, I think a similar process has been in use here for some years, they use wood scraps for starting material.

As so often, it is a question of price.

 

[stonepark]

Pipe dreams, when they stop the import of fertiliser (most likely by pricing it out of reach), all that sewage will be needed for the land.

Any modern idea that relys on a waste stream will disappear very quickly once things become difficult.

 

[Chris]

Ryanair have been providing a crap flying experience for decades already.

 

[FerlasDave]

Perfect for providing the 1.21gw of electricity needed to power a flux capacitor!

 

[C_Claycomb]

Pipe dreams, when they stop the import of fertiliser (most likely by pricing it out of reach), all that sewage will be needed for the land.

Any modern idea that relys on a waste stream will disappear very quickly once things become difficult.

It may be a pipe dream. However, resources rarely go where "needed", rather they go where the money is. If there is more money to be made by turning sewage into aviation fuel than there is in using it as fertilizer, that is what the majority of sewage will be used for.

I may be mis-reading your second paragraph. Taken with the first, it sounds like you don't think new things are worth trying to recycle or reuse waste because there may be some point in the future where they may no longer be viable. So, no point in recycling paper, or polyester, or aluminium, steel, copper, glass etc because one day things will get more "difficult" than they are now. Huh? Recycling all these things was once a modern idea...that relied upon waste streams. I think it could be argued that it has been better that we have been recycling them for the past X decades, even if in the next decade society collapses and we all go back to the dark ages.

The scams, cons and misleading campaigns associated with recycling particularly plastics are well known, and the idea of turning the sewage of a burgeoning urban population into fuel for internal combustion seems too good to believe. Like generating that 1.21GW using old banana skins! But I think it would be wonderful if it is so.

 

[Nice65]

I saw that this morning.
Just from the innovation point of view it’s exciting.
Then my inner cynic kicked in!
I burn three tonnes of kerosene a year but I’m being told that I won’t be allowed to do that in a few years. I doubt that this will be developed any time soon

No idea if the burning of kerosene is going to stop or not, but it’ll be supplied by oil barons until they're prevented from buying the decision to continue selling their oil.