SKY Renewables Burdekin Pty. Ltd. has let a contract to a subsidiary of Maire SPA’s Rome-based NextChem SPA to deliver a suite of services for the operator’s proposed sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production complex under development in the Burdekin region of North Queensland, Australia.

Under the Aug. 17 contract, the waste-to-chemical segment of NextChem’s MyRechemical SRL will license its proprietary NX Circular technology to equip the gasification and gas treatment units for the syngas section of the operator’s Project Lion, Maire said.

The project would specifically be outfitted with MyRechemical’s NX Circular Gasification technology applied to a feedstock of locally available sugarcane residues to produce purified chemical-grade syngas for subsequent conversion into SAF and renewable diesel, according to the service provider.

Alongside technology licensing, Maire said MyRechemical’s scope of work under the contract also includes delivery of the process design package as well as unspecified engineering services for Project Lion’s syngas section.

While the service provider revealed neither a value nor timeframe for its work on the order—which, apart from certain but unidentified engineering services, remains subject to an official notice to proceed—Maire confirmed the project, if completed, will be equipped to produce up to 125,000 tonnes/year (tpy) of SAF once at full operational scale.

Undertaken for initial development in 2018 as a means establishing a sugarcane-based bioenergy and biofuels industry using agricultural wastes from cane farmers in Burdekin—Queensland’s largest single cane-growing district—Project Lion is a multiphased initiative that, in addition to biofuels production, includes plans to process wastes such as sugarcane tops-and-trash (green and dry leaves) into biomass briquettes that could be gasified into syngas and then converted into biomethane (e.g., bio-LNG, renewable natural gas, or RNG).

RNG volumes would then be shipped via conventional LNG tankers to markets in the Asia Pacific such as Singapore and Japan with high demand for RNG, which is used as a clean feedstock to generate decarbonized, renewable electricity through a combined-cycle gas turbine.

Already underpinned by long-term offtake agreements under discussion with power-generation companies with LNG-fired units, Project Lion is also backed by CANEGROWERS Burdekin Ltd., a collective representing the interests of 200 cane growers in the Burdekin district.

Second SAF project

Project Lion is joined by SKY Renewables’ separately proposed Project Feast, which aims to link growers in Queensland’s Central Highlands Region to broader opportunities in global SAF development.

In collaboration with cotton farmers in Emerald, Central Highlands, Queensland, growing sugar beets as a winter rotation crop, Project Feast entails using thick juice yielded from the sugar beet plant as a low-cost feedstock for production ethanol that would subsequently be converted into SAF using Honeywell UOP LLC’s proprietary alcohol-to-jet technology.

SKY Renewables said biomass resources from the Central Highlands would enable its proposed first project in Emerald to produce enough bioethanol to meet the equivalent of one-quarter (or 150 million l./year) of Qantas Airways’ total 10% SAF commitment (about 600 million l./year) by 2030, with enough feedstock available across the region for follow-on projects of similar capacity.

A definitive timeline for Project Feast’s planned trial has yet to be revealed.