“Five years ago, refineries were ambivalent about going green. Nowadays that view is changing, with lots of new ideas and a motivated workforce. But at least for now, the direction of travel is a cost increase – and there are ways to solve that.”
Ian Moore, Director of Low Carbon, Advisian
Moore and Mitchells’ engineering experience shines a light on the on-the-ground challenges of SAF, from empty pipelines to lost efficiencies. Most of all, though, they’re confident of solutions emerging for all of this – and if legal frameworks worldwide start to converge, it can only be a good thing.
Read the Full Interview
Advisian consults on everything related to decarbonization, from a clean-sheet-of-paper idea to in-depth implementation roadmaps. Its consultants, scientists, strategists, and engineers work together to solve the world's critical infrastructure, environmental, energy, and resource challenges. Its UK operation includes chemical engineers Ian Moore and Ian Mitchell, who are tasked with seeing “the big picture” of how parts of each puzzle can work together.
“On a typical project, a client may have green power, they may have a CO2 source, they may have feedstocks – but there are many ways those inputs can connect, and success or failure depends on how the parts are arranged.”
Ian Mitchell, Principal Consultant, Advisian
Creating such plans needs cross-sector knowledge, since even related industries have different cost drivers and ways of doing things. And many are grappling with a new problem: having to factor in feedstock scarcities that don’t exist in their other BUs, requiring a very different approach to operations. Let’s see the two Ians’ views on the economic and environmental factors of this transformation, with the accent on how they approach a project.
CHOICES NEED TO BE MADE
Advisian is project-agnostic: one client may want top-level recommendations on decarbonizing their entire operation, while another may want a detailed plan for production that depends on the price of carbon credits. But low-carbon is the unifying demand. In recent years, there’s been a genuine – and very positive – shift in the profile of engineers entering the industry: everybody these days is interested in decarbonization and how we can build “greenness” into their processes.
It’s coming at a cost, though, which is why a lot of early-stage activity is being driven by government. And that means choices are having to be made. If you’re making SAF now, it’s an open question whether or not using fossil CO2 can count towards your targets; the EU states it will be acceptable for ten years, but given the spin-up time of a new plant, industry would prefer a 20-25yr timeline.
For example, one Australia-based project on carbon abatement looked good on paper – until a general election was held. The new government changed the legislation, and the project no longer made economic sense.
THE “RIGHT” SOLUTION DEPENDS ON HOW YOU FRAME THE PROBLEM
In the petrochemicals industry, most of the time, a facility can rely on a pipe being at full capacity. As production of SAF ramps up, that’s not the case – so people are looking at scarcity in their cost models in a whole new way, having to plan for inputs simply not being there.
Also, when you’re joining together companies from different sectors – startups, recycling, refineries, the whole value chain – those cost models use different assumptions, even different terminology. So, the “right” solution depends on how you frame the problem, and how you draw that box around one client may not be the right solution for the planet! Not all green projects look green when you take a big picture view.
Those assumptions, though, are a huge opportunity. A plastic recycling plant, for example, may have requirements for waste of a certain composition or translucency. That’s important if it’s going to be new plastic – but not if it’s going to be SAF. So, challenging those assumptions is key.
STANDARDIZATION AND MODULARIZATION = SAF SUCCESS
Moore and Mitchell believe the next decade will see two big – and complementary – production trends. First, the next generation of plants will improve incrementally but quickly, as competition makes clear which processes are winners and successful models grow in scale: a 50 tonnes/yr plant today may easily become a 1m tonnes/yr one in five years. With parts of the solution increasingly available as “modules”, and standardized designs enabling repeatability, this scale-up may happen faster than most imagine.
But there’s a second thread: exotic and innovative solutions for the energy sources (heat) needed for SAF production. Until recently, heating at scale electrically wasn’t viable for most large facilities. But fast-evolving techniques like plasma cracking and microwave cracking now allow high temperatures from electricity upstream, this means big industrial processes (even those needing 150-200mW) can happen at smaller scales.
LISTEN TO IAN MOORE DISCUSS
THE MOST RECENT EUROPEAN LEGISLATION
IN THE FUEL FOR THOUGHT PODCAST
SEASON 4, EPISODES 4 & 5
CLOSING THE GAP BETWEEN OUTPUT, OFFTAKE, AND FINANCIAL VIABILITY
Both see opportunities in two other areas: heat integration and materials integration. The former – using waste heat from one process as input heat in another – is widely practiced within facilities, less so between different processes in the supply chain; effective usage can make or break a cost model. The same goes for the latter: waste mass in one process can become feedstock in another. (One example: waste hydrogen from H2O cracking can aid gasification, or fuel a heat req.) Finding these efficiencies isn’t trivial – the advantages, added up along a value chain, can be critical to success.
The other picture of success is less tangible. Ian Mitchell dreams of a homogenization of laws relating to decarbonization around the world, enabling the supersized investments required for keeping SAF supplies on track for 50% in a few decades, closing the gap between output volumes, offtake agreements, and financial viability.
THE FUTURE LOOKS BRIGHT
Whether a factory, refinery, or production facility “works” isn’t simply a matter of engineering. It’s about optimization – integrated systems and processes, standardized designs that fit together in modular layouts, and consistent approaches that let different industry sectors work with shared understanding. For these consultants, the future looks bright.
