Nacero (Houston) will transition its current pre-construction, multi-billion USD facility in Texas, designed to produce low carbon gasoline to the production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and lower carbon aviation fuel (LCAF). When fully completed, Nacero’s facility in Texas will be the largest commercial scale facility in the US for producing SAF and LCAF utilizing TOPSOE’s MTJet technology.
Nacero will produce SAF and LCAF from renewable natural gas (RNG) sourced from dairy farms and landfills, and from mitigated flared gas sourced in the Permian Basin. The SAF and LCAF products will contain no sulfur, while produced utilizing 100%, low-cost renewable power, and utilizing integrated carbon capture within the process. As a result, Nacero and TOPSOE offer America’s aviation industry a lower carbon solution for everyday jet fuel at an affordable price and with up to a 100% reduction in its lifecycle carbon footprint.
“Topsoe fully supports Nacero’s decision to shift its focus to SAF and LCAF production given the challenge of meeting 2030 and 2050 consumption goals of renewable jet fuel. We have been working very closely with Nacero’s experienced project team to implement Topsoe NG to gasoline process (TIGAS) and we are very excited about the opportunity to continue this successful collaboration while building a scalable solution to meet the world’s growing demand for SAF and LCAF,” said Henrik Rasmussen, Topsoe’s Managing Director, The Americas
Nacero will leverage already complete project development work, site permitting, and extensive engineering and construction planning for the earlier proposed TIGAS gasoline project. This work will be updated by TOPSOE and Nacero with minimal design modifications required to enable utilization of the very similar MTJet™ process. The already completed engineering and construction planning work, remains unchanged and is completely compatible as designed with TOPSOE’s MTJet™ process. This includes TOPSOE’s proprietary processes, catalysts, and equipment designs for their SynCOR Methanol™ technology as well as integrated carbon capture technology provided by Giammarco Vetrocoke. Leveraging this previous work enables and achieves significant schedule advantages for the joint development effort to achieve commercialization of SAF production.
TOPSOE has more than 50 years of commercial experience and internal research and development with methanol synthesis and methane-rich gas-to-gasoline processes which support a methanol-to-jet solution. TOPSOE, with Nacero participation, is currently working with ASTM to qualify the methanol to jet pathway. Topsoe will provide the required samples (produced from their demonstration unit) to validate fuel quality, safety, and compatibility with existing jet engines.
TOPSOE will provide Nacero with engineering and design services to update their Process Design Package (PDP) for MTJet technology and will supply catalyst and proprietary hardware for Nacero’s Texas facility.