Southwest Airlines to Use Forest Biofuels

- by Ter­ry Max­on, Decem­ber 31, 2014, Dal­las Morn­ing News

South­west Air­lines announced Wednes­day that it plans to buy some bio­fu­els made from waste wood, for use in its San Fran­cis­co Bay air­ports begin­ning in two years.

To use South­west­’s phras­ing, it is pur­chas­ing “low car­bon renew­able jet fuel, made using for­est residues that will help reduce the risk of destruc­tive wild­fires in the West­ern Unit­ed States.”

It has agreed to buy about 3 mil­lion gal­lons a year from Red Rocks Bio­fu­els, a Fort Collins, Col­orado, that focused on recy­cling that foresty stuff.

That won’t pro­vide much of South­west­’s needs.

he Dal­las car­ri­er in 2013 bought 1,818 mil­lion gal­lons, so 3 mil­lion gal­lons would rep­re­sent 0.2 per­cent of its needs or about 60 per­cent of an aver­age day’s usage.

But it might make a notice­able por­tion of the fuel needs at South­west­’s Bay air­ports — San Fran­cis­co, Oak­land and San Jose — where the fuel will be deliv­ered begin­ning in 2016.

“Our com­mit­ment to sus­tain­abil­i­ty and effi­cient oper­a­tions led us on a search for a viable bio­fu­el that uses a sus­tain­able feed­stock with a high rate of suc­cess,” said Bill Tiffany, South­west­’s vice pres­i­dent of sup­ply chain.

“Red Rock Bio­fu­el’s tech­nol­o­gy, eco­nom­ics and approved use made enter­ing into an agree­ment for pur­chase a win-win sit­u­a­tion,” he said.

“From the out­set, we have sought to build the best pos­si­ble team of project part­ners,” Red Rock CEO Ter­ry Kule­sa said.

“A con­ver­sa­tion we start­ed with South­west on the premise of pro­vid­ing renew­able jet fuel at cost par­i­ty with con­ven­tion­al jet fuel has evolved into a great partnership.

“We’re hap­py to help South­west diver­si­fy its fuel supply,”Kulesa said.

Accord­ing to the announce­ment, “RRB’s first plant will con­vert approx­i­mate­ly 140,000 dry tons of woody bio­mass feed­stock into at least 12 mil­lion gal­lons per year of renew­able jet, diesel, and naph­tha fuels.”

How can you turn humus, plant duff and twigs into fuel to fly a com­mer­cial airplane?

Here’s Red Rock­’s expla­na­tion from its website:

“RRB’s tech­nol­o­gy plat­form con­verts woody bio­mass to jet, diesel, and naph­tha fuels. Our process begins with the gasi­fi­ca­tion of woody bio­mass to pro­duce syn­the­sis gas.

“This syn­the­sis gas is cleaned and sent to a Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch unit where it is con­vert­ed to liq­uid hydrocarbons.

“Hydropro­cess­ing refines the liq­uid hydro­car­bons to pro­duce jet, diesel and naptha fuels.”

Red Rock has received a $70 mil­lion grant from the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy to build a “biore­fin­ery” at Lake­view, Ore­gon, near the inter­sec­tion of Cal­i­for­nia, Neva­da and Ore­gon and close to Fre­mont Nation­al Forest.