EUBCE 2026 - Renston Jake FERNANDES - Desert SAF: A Dual Alcohol-to-Jet Platform from Saudi Arabian Dates by Integrating Ethanol-to-Jet (ETJ) and Methanol-to-Jet (MTJ) with Shared Utilities

Desert SAF: A Dual Alcohol-to-Jet Platform from Saudi Arabian Dates by Integrating Ethanol-to-Jet (ETJ) and Methanol-to-Jet (MTJ) with Shared Utilities

Short Introductive summary

Saudi Arabia’s date-palm sector provides a distinctive basis for SAF: fermentable fruit for ethanol and abundant fronds/pits for gasification, aligning with Vision 2030. This study builds a single, heat-integrated Aspen model that couples ethanol-to-jet (ETJ) with methanol-to-jet (MTJ via MTO) under a cradle-to-refinery-gate boundary beginning at dates. Fruit is fermented to hydrous ethanol (94 wt%), yielding 40% ethanol and 38.5% biogenic CO2; residues are gasified to syngas, shifted, and converted to e-methanol, while CO2 from both sources is captured (100%) and recycled to close the carbon loop. Gasification operated at 32% conversion, producing 368.47 kg/day MeOH from 1,153.28 kg/day waste and 1,099.22 kg/day CO2 (captured), for a combined 1,430.78 kg/day e-MeOH. ETJ produced 132.3 kg/day jet at 63.2 g/MJ ethanol intensity; the cut is paraffinic and tight , C10–C14 = 98.59 mol%, LHV ˜ 43.7 MJ/kg—with zero aromatics/iso, so it functions as an ATJ-SPK blend component. MTJ yielded 257.65 kg/day jet, paraffinic and mid-distillate-centered (dominant C12 n/iso, ~10 mol% olefins, trace aromatics), LHV ˜ 43.8 MJ/kg, also suitable as ATJ-SPK blendstock.

R.J. Fernandes, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, SAUDI ARABIA
M.R. Shakeel, King Abdullah University of Science And Technology, Thuwal, SAUDI ARABIA
D.D Nguyen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, NORWAY
H.G. Im, King Abdullah University of Science And Technology, Thuwal, SAUDI ARABIA
J.W.G. Turner, King Abdullah University of Science And Technology, Thuwal, SAUDI ARABIA