Sustainable Aviation Fuel: Review of Technical Pathways

The report is a technical review of SAF pathways prepared by Johnathan Holladay, Zia Abdullah, and Joshua Heyne, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office. It explains why SAF is necessary for commercial aviation, why aviation cannot rely on electrification at commercial scale, and why SAF development must begin with jet-fuel performance requirements rather than simply copying gasoline or diesel logic.

The DOE/BETO report identifies the SAF opportunity in waste carbon, MSW, wet sludges, and plastic waste. Cobeal identifies the engineering discipline required to make that opportunity credible: the project must prove the water loop. FT produces water, but FT does not make that water clean, reusable, or circular by chemistry alone.