Producing Alternative Transportation Fuels (including SAF) From Renewable Resources With IH^2®

As global demand for power and fuels grows, liquid fuels and gases will play an impactful role in achieving net-zero emissions. Renewable energy feedstocks are available in plentiful supply, offering a versatile portfolio of low-carbon options to address hard-to-decarbonize sectors, including heavy-duty transport.

GTI Energy and Shell Catalysts and Technologies (Shell C&T) have made great strides toward commercial readiness of the IH^2® process. The 5 ton per day (TPD) IH^2® demonstration plant at the new Shell India Markets Pvt Ltd (SIMPL) Technology Center in Bangalore, India, has operated reliably for hundreds of hours converting woody biomass into transportation fuels. IH^2® is a catalytic thermo-chemical process that converts non-food biomass feedstocks—such as wood, agricultural residues, algae, aquatic plants, and municipal waste—directly into SAF (sustainable aviation fuel), gasoline, and diesel drop-in transportation fuels with greater than 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

GTI Energy invented, tested, and patented the fully integrated IH^2® technology and has an exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with Shell C&T.

U.S. Department of Energy funding enabled rapid development of the IH^2® technology in the early stages, from initial proof-of-principle experiments through continuous testing in GTI Energy’s 50 kg/day pilot plant, followed by continued development together with Shell C&T. The cumulative operation timeline of the pilot plant exceeds 15,000 hours. This has been the basis for the early engineering work to design commercial-scale plants.