Comstock Fuels and Emerging Fuels Technology advance SAF and other renewable fuel yields

The integrated system will be able to capture and convert carbon emissions into ‘emissions derived renewable fuels’ (EDF) that further extends Comstock’s industry-leading renewable fuel yields, including SAF. All commercialisation of existing and future Comstock Fuels Corp.’s renewable fuel technologies, including those developed through this partnership, will be managed exclusively by Comstock Fuels Corp. EFT is headquartered and operates in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

David Winsness, president of Comstock Fuels, said, “Ken, Mark and EFT are leading fuel innovators (and producers) and one of our most trusted technical partners and supporters for many, many years, and true leaders in innovating and deploying gas-to-liquids solutions. Integrating the EFT process with our already market leading yields enables a significant increase in our SAF production goals, while further reducing carbon intensities. Extending our system with EFT is a very natural evolution.”

Emissions derived fuels

Comstock Fuels delivers advanced lignocellulosic biomass refining solutions that produce market-leading yields of SAF, renewable diesel, cellulosic ethanol, and other renewable fuels at extremely low carbon intensities. Comstock’s process involves:

• Solvolytic digestion and fractionation of lignocellulosic biomass.
• Bioconversion of cellulose into cellulosic ethanol.
• Esterification of lignin and other derivatives into bioleum oil.
• Hydrodeoxygenation of bioleum oil into hydrodeoxygenated bioleum oil (HBO).
• Refining of the resulting intermediates into ASTM compliant fuels.

These processes can produce up to 125 gal of renewable fuel per dry t of feedstock (on a gasoline gal equivalent basis, or GGE), depending on feedstock, lignin content, site conditions, and other process parameters, with extremely low carbon intensity scores of 15 or even less.

Integrating EFT’s GTL process to convert the process emissions has the potential to increase the bulk biomass conversion yields even further, to more than 140 GGE and approximately 70% of the theoretical maximum yield from most forms of woody biomass.

<>“Comstock’s yields and recent progress are extremely impressive,” added Kenneth Agee, founder and president of EFT. “Using woody biomass to produce circular fuels has the potential to make a major contribution to decarbonising global mobility and this TCA and collaboration with the team is a great application of our technology for the production of premium synthetic Fischer-Tropsch fuels. We share similar ambitions of accelerating the production of renewable fuels with low or negative carbon intensity on a cost-competitive basis, and we’re excited to get to work.”

Technology readiness level

The company uses the technology readiness scale to estimate the readiness of technology from conception to commercialisation, iterating sequentially as follows:

• TRL 1 (basic principles observed and reported).
• TRL 2 (technology concept and application formulated).
• TRL 3 (analytical and experimental proof of concept).
• TRL 4 (validation in laboratory environment).
• TRL 5 (pre-pilot scale validation in relevant environment).
• TRL 6 (pilot prototype demonstration in relevant environment).
• TRL 7 (scaled-up commercial prototype in operational environment).
• TRL 8 (commercial system demonstration).
• TRL 9 (commercial maturity).

The company’s existing process solutions use TRL 9 components in new ways that have been validated at TRL 6 with plans deployed for elevating to TRL 7 in the recently announced 75 000 tpy demonstration facility, and from there to TRL 8 in the planned 1 million tpy commercial facilities. The scope of work under the planned technical services agreement with EFT involves all engineering and technical support required to build and integrate a modular TRL 7 scale-up of the EFT Process into a demonstration facility followed by continued and accelerated scaling to TRL 8 in the commercial facilities.

“Process emissions capture and utilisation will meaningfully enhance our commercialisation impact,” concluded Kevin Kreisler, Comstock’s chief technology officer. “Our innovations and engineering teams have designed our processes to maximise quality, yield, throughput, and profitability while relying on robust TRL 9 systems to mitigate scaling risks. Still, upwards of 20% of our feedstock value would otherwise be lost to process emissions. Converting even a portion of those losses into additional yield with EFT’s proven commercial solution enables us to and accelerate the rate that the market adopts our combined offering and produce globally meaningful quantities of new energy.”

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/the-environment/03012025/comstock-fuels-and-emerging-fuels-technology-advance-saf-and-other-renewable-fuel-yields/