Inside look: How one startup aims to produce SAF at livestock farms

Renewable fuels startup Circularity Fuels has developed a compact electric processing unit to convert biogas into synthesis gas, a precursor to sustainable aviation fuel. In a recent demonstration, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company successfully converted biogas — a waste product from livestock farming — from a California Central Valley dairy farm into synthesis gas, or syngas, using its proprietary Ouro Reactor , the company told Cargo Facts . [caption id="attachment_57291046" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Circularity Fuels’ Ouro Reactor can turn biogas into syngas on-site at a farm. (Courtesy/Circularity Fuels)[/caption] The company aims to scale sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production by installing its technology on farms to convert waste into SAF on-site, Circularity Chief Executive Stephen Beaton told Cargo Facts . “The idea is that we sign long-term offtake agreements with airlines ... where they buy SAF at a certain dollar-per-gallon figure and then we finance the plant,” Beaton said. “We would pay the farmer for their biogas or ... maybe they're an equity partner in the project.” Circularity, founded in 2023, has secured $8 million in seed funding and grants from venture capital firms, the National Science Foundation, California Energy Commission and others. The company is part of IAG’s accelerator program, IAGi. “We're also in conversations with cargo airlines around SAF,” Beaton said. Ouro Reactor In the recent demonstration, the Ouro Reactor processed raw biogas from a working dairy farm’s covered lagoon digester, converting methane and carbon dioxide into syngas. Unlike traditional gas-fired reformers, the Ouro Reactor uses modified automotive industry components to convert the biogas. This requires less money and less space, Beaton said. Syngas produced by the Ouro Reactor can be converted into SAF using Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis, one of the key pathways to SAF production . The FT method transforms carbon monoxide and hydrogen into liquid hydrocarbons. “In general, we would partner with farmers to develop a plant where we have both the reformer and the Fischer-Tropsch reactor that we're building,” Beaton said. “We put that on site, and we convert their waste streams ... into SAF for them, and we monitor that remotely.” The system can run for thousands of hours with little human intervention, he said. Improved efficiency A traditional gas-fired reformer features tubes with catalysts that are heated using natural gas. However, the heat profile drops off quickly once inside the tube, meaning only the catalysts along the tube casing are properly heated and activated, Beaton said. The Ouro Reactor’s tube has a thin wash-coat of catalyst inside it. The tube is then heated by electric current, ensuring the heat is more evenly distributed to activate the majority of the catalysts. Circularity plans to use wind and solar power for its electricity where possible, Beaton said. [caption id="attachment_57291047" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] (Courtesy/Circularity Fuels)[/caption] “You can control the thickness of the catalyst, so you get better catalyst utilization,” Beaton said. “The challenge is, this is very expensive and difficult to scale up. And so, what we've done is we've taken a traditional automotive catalytic converter, which has a lot of these channels. “Essentially, it's in this spiral pattern, and each one of these spirals is, in a way, a tube,” he said. “We apply a current to this catalytic converter in such a way that the heat is incredibly evenly distributed, and you can get a lot of heat per unit of volume.” The Ouro Reactor is 100 times smaller and 100 times less expensive than conventional reformers, Beaton said. Overcoming infrastructure challenges The United States is home to more than 20,000 large livestock operations that produce nearly 1 trillion pounds of manure each year, yet fewer than 6% of them capture the biogas that is produced as the waste decomposes, according to the American Biogas Council. A dearth of natural gas pipelines has prevented most agricultural biogas from being converted into renewable fuels , Circularity said. However, when paired with scaled-down FT systems, Ouro Reactors can produce liquid fuel on-site that can be transported by truck or rail, eliminating the need for pipelines, the company said. “For the first time, farmers will become renewable fuel producers without waiting for pipeline infrastructure that will never come,” Beaton said. “The liquid fuel can be trucked out using existing transportation networks, making energy production as straightforward as any other farm output.” If deployed across all viable U.S. waste sites, including farms, landfills and wastewater treatment plants, Circularity estimates that biogas-to-SAF technology could produce 42 million gallons of SAF, nearly 160 million liters, per day. SAF production volumes in 2024 reached 1.3 billion liters, double the 600 million liters produced in 2023, according to IATA. To meet net-zero targets with SAF alone, 450 billion liters will be needed by 2050, TIACA previously told Cargo Facts . Circularity plans to demonstrate complete biogas-to-SAF production later this year at a California farm, with commercial deployment targeted for 2026. Register here for Cargo Facts ’ upcoming free webinar, “Air cargo route networks: Strategies for improved results and greater efficiencies,” on Tuesday, Sept. 16, at 11 a.m. ET. Cargo Facts Symposium, the quintessential event for stakeholders and key leaders in the global freighter and air cargo industries, will take place Oct. 22-24 at the Grand Hyatt in Nashville . Learn more and register today to take advantage of the early-bird rate before Sept. 5.

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