Picture courtesy of Johnson Matthey

Johnson Matthey, a ‘global leader in sustainable technologies’, has launched HyCOgen, a technology designed to play a pivotal role in enabling the conversion of captured CO₂ and green hydrogen into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).

By combining HyCOgen with the award-winning FT CANS Fischer Tropsch technology (developed in collaboration with BP), Johnson Matthey offers an integrated, scalable solution for use in the ‘efficient and cost-effective production of renewable power based SAF’.

HyCOgen, Johnson Matthey’s ‘Reverse Water Gas Shift’ technology, is a catalysed process to convert green hydrogen and CO₂ into carbon monoxide (CO), which is combined with additional hydrogen to form synthesis gas (syngas), a ‘crucial building block’ in the manufacture of fuels and chemicals.

The integration with the FT CANS technology provides an end to end, optimised and highly scalable process that turns over 95% of the CO₂ into high-quality synthetic crude oil. This synthetic crude oil can be further upgraded into sustainable drop-in fuel products including aviation fuels, renewable diesel and naphtha.

The scalability of the integrated HyCOgen/FT CANS solution enables cost-effective deployment across a wide range of project sizes — from small-scale, fed by hydrogen from a single electrolyser, through to world-scale with multiple large electrolyser modules.

Jane Toogood, sector chief executive at Johnson Matthey, said: “Given the challenges associated with new propulsion technologies and airport infrastructure, plus the long asset life of aircraft, there are significant hurdles in moving from hydrocarbon-based aviation fuel to alternatives such as battery electric or hydrogen.

“This is where Johnson Matthey’s longstanding expertise and market-leading position in syngas generation technology can play a crucial role, by providing solutions that enable the production of sustainable drop-in fuels that are deployable today. By combining HyCOgen with FT CANS, we can now deliver customers a cost-efficient, reliable and scalable technology to help increase SAF production.”