• On Tuesday, the French start-up Global Bioénergies, with the German Swift Fuel, flew a small piston engine plane between Saarbrücken (Germany) and Reims.

    With, in the tank, 60 liters of gasoline produced from beetroot and wood.

  • A test flight, but Global Bioénergies hopes to be able to market a 100% renewable fuel for light aircraft in the coming years.

    And do not give up the idea of ​​developing a solution for jet planes, specializing in the transport of passengers.

  • Airbus and other major players in the airline industry are also working there.

    But the challenge is not only technological.

    It is also to know if the production of biofuels will one day be able to prove itself of size to meet the needs of aviation.

It is a flight that is especially valid for its symbol.

Early Tuesday afternoon, a Vans RV-8, a small two-seater with propellers, took off from Saarbrücken airport, in Germany, to land an hour later at Reims aerodrome, 200 km more West.

The originality lies in the 60 liters of fuel used for this flight.

Not 100 LL, the gasoline usually used by piston engine airplanes, but a substitute made up of 97% renewable resources.

75% from beets, and 25% from wood.

Behind this project, we find, in collaboration with the German company Swift fuels, specialized in fuels for aviation, Global Bioenergies, which develops hydrocarbons from renewable resources.

The French start-up had been talked about a few days earlier by launching a range of cosmetics made from renewable resources.

Isobutene, the key molecule

The common point ?

It's isobutene, responds Marc Delcourt, co-founder of Global Bioenergie.

“This molecule with four carbon atoms is one of the building blocks of petrochemistry,” he explains.

It can be transformed into many compounds to make cosmetics, therefore, but also plastics, rubber ... and therefore fuel.

"

Global Bioenergie manages to produce this isobutene no longer from petroleum but from renewable resources, while keeping the same possible field of applications. And if the start-up is well advanced in cosmetics, air fuel remains in its sights. “This is the application for which the cost / price equation is the most difficult to find,” specifies Marc Delcourt. It will also require an extremely efficient process and very large factories to serve this market. "

Global Bioenergy then presents this Tuesday's flight as a first step towards the emergence of a biofuels sector in aviation. The French start-up hopes to be able to have a marketable solution "somewhere in the second half of the decade". Starting with piston engine airplanes. A niche in aviation… but not that small. "We are talking about small aircraft with two to six seats, mainly used for recreational aviation in France," says Marc Delcourt. In the United States, they can also be used for passenger transport, typically between state capitals and secondary cities. Global Bioénergies estimates at one billion liters [approximately 800,000 tonnes] the amount of fuel consumed each year by piston engine airplanes in Europe and the United States.

Jets in the crosshairs

Global Bioenergies does not want to stop at this first market and aims to develop a 100% renewable fuel for jets, those used in commercial aviation.

This is the heart of the problem when we talk about “decarbonization of the aviation sector”.

“These devices use kerosene [also produced from petroleum], recalls Marc Delcourt.

It's a little more complex, but our process also makes it possible to obtain this fuel from renewable resources.

"

Global Bionergies is not alone at the time. On June 10, Airbus and several French aeronautics players presented the Volcan project which aims, by the end of the year, to fly an A320 Neo with 100% renewable kerosene. "Here again a demonstration flight, which will have to be followed by several years of development to arrive at marketable solutions", specifies Philippe Novelli, director of "Aeronautical propulsion and environment" at Onera, the French aerospace research center, involved in this project.

The challenge is first and foremost technological.

"It is already possible to incorporate biofuels into fossil kerosene, but not beyond 50%," continues Philippe Novelli.

This limit comes from the fact that fossil kerosene contains molecules [aromatics for example] that biofuels do not have, although they have a role in the proper functioning of aircraft engines.

"This is the whole point of the Volcan project:" to see how it would be possible to adapt planes so that they do without these molecules ", he continues.

Biofuels too limited in quantity?

The other issue concerns the availability of the resource. If aviation does not use (or very little) biofuel today, it is quite simply that the production of biofuels is for the moment too limited. Should we wait for the best in the future? On the demand side, the needs are potentially gigantic. In 2018, global civil aviation consumed 286 million tonnes of kerosene, according to the International Air Transport Association (Iata).

On the supply side, "today it is possible to transform almost all types of biomass [organic matter of plant origin] into aircraft fuel," explains Philippe Novelli. From oils [palm, rapeseed, sunflower, used oils], or sugars coming directly from plants [sugar cane, beet, etc.], starch [wheat], lignocellulose [wood]… “But the production volumes will never be sufficient, ”estimates Sylvain Angerand, campaign coordinator for the Canopée association, affiliated with Friends of the Earth, which is preparing a report on the subject for this fall. “Fortunately, France has closed the door to the use of first generation biofuels [from crops traditionally used for food], such as palm oil,whose sharply increasing demand is a factor of deforestation in Southeast Asia, he continues. But the other sectors mentioned for producing biofuels in the future - agricultural production residues, wood, used cooking oils - also have their perverse effects if they are developed massively. "

Promising electro-fuels?

Philippe Novelli, he does not close the door to any biofuel. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates up to 170 exajoules per year the amount of biomass that it would be possible to produce with a good level of convergence between studies on the subject while s 'Ensuring that enough agricultural land is dedicated to food production, he says. 170 exajoules, that would allow a share to be allocated to aviation. Above all, Onera's “Aeronautical propulsion and environment” director points out that there are other sustainable fuel sectors emerging. "This is the case with electro-fuels [or Power to liquid fuel], which aim to produce synthetic fuels from CO2 captured in industrial fumes or in the atmosphere," he illustrates.

“This track seems smarter to us,” slips Sylvain Angerand.

But it will be useless if, at the same time, we do not massively reduce air traffic.

A message hammered home by environmental NGOs and that Marc Delcourt does not totally contradict, to Global Bioenergie.

"To decarbonize the aviation sector, we will have to both rethink our use of aircraft, but also work to make aircraft greener," he points out.

On this second pillar, there is the great promise of the hydrogen plane, but which should not be widely used before 2050. “It should be much sooner for 100% renewable fuels, which will not require the production of a new generation of aircraft, ”points out Marc Delcourt.

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