Solar Fast Pyrolysis: Mapping EU-27 Waste Biomass for Jet Fuel
Solar Fast Pyrolysis
European researchers have mapped the waste biomass available across all 27 EU member states for aviation fuel, testing whether straw, demolition wood and sawdust can realistically supply the bloc’s 2050 blending mandates.
The work comes out of Circular Fuels, a Horizon Europe project that couples concentrated solar heat and solar electricity with fast pyrolysis of bio-based waste materials. Its partners include Aalto University, Vienna University of Technology, VTT, CNRS, Lund University, ORLEN, BOSMAL, Ranido and REVOLVE.
Four Feedstocks, None Competing with Food
The project works with two feedstock families. The first is waste wood: demolition wood grade B, which is non-hazardous timber carrying coatings such as paint or varnish, and pinewood sawdust left over from wood processing.
The second is agricultural residue, principally wheat and rye straw. All four materials are low-cost, bio-based and listed under Annex IX of the Renewable Energy Directive, and the recast RED III puts further weight on waste and residue feedstocks that do not displace food crops or drive indirect land-use change.
Mapping Availability Down to the Region
A conference paper presented at the 33rd European Biomass Conference and Exhibition in Valencia by Zervopoulou, Inayat, Papadokonstantakis and Järvinen assessed straw availability using historical national crop production data from 2000 to 2023, then projected it to 2030 and 2050 under low, base and high scenarios.
The picture is uneven. Countries such as Denmark, Slovakia and Bulgaria could out-produce their own future aviation fuel needs from straw alone, while Belgium and Greece fall well short. The team began with France, the Czech Republic and Denmark before extending the analysis to all 27 member states, refining it from national totals down to NUTS-3 regions so candidate bio-oil plant locations could be identified where feedstock actually sits.
A SWOT review highlighted straw’s abundance and its non-competition with food, alongside the logistical and seasonal problems that come with collecting a bulky, harvest-bound residue.
Why the Mandates Make This Urgent
ReFuelEU Aviation ramps the sustainable fuel share at EU airports from 2 percent in 2025 to 70 percent by 2050. With jet fuel demand at EU airports projected at roughly 46 million tonnes by 2030, meeting the 2050 share implies producing on the order of 35 million tonnes a year.
On the conversion side, a companion study by Abid and colleagues published in Biomass and Bioenergy examined the fast pyrolysis route from demolition wood to aviation fuel through combined laboratory work and process simulation. Biochar, one of the by-products, can be returned to farmland to improve nutrient availability and water retention, closing part of the loop the straw came from.
The conclusion is a familiar one for anyone who has sited a thermal conversion plant: the molecules are available, and the technology is advancing, but the supply chain decides the project.
Take Waste Biomass to Commercial Bio-Oil Production
Feedstock mapping tells you where a plant could go. A bankable project tells you whether it gets built. Klean Industries works with KBR to deliver performance-guaranteed turnkey plants, which means throughput, yield and product quality are contracted outcomes rather than pilot-scale hopes, and the project is fully bankable with the delivery risk carried by the contractor.
That matters most when a feedstock is seasonal and heterogeneous, as straw, demolition wood and sawdust all are. Our reference base includes commercial-scale thermal conversion assets, among them the commercial recovered carbon black plant in Poland, so guarantees are written against plants that are running rather than against models.
There are two routes. License the technology and operate it yourself, with engineering and commissioning support, or have KBR build the facility turnkey and hand it over proven. Either way, start with a feasibility study that tests your specific residues, logistics radius and offtake before any steel is ordered.
Contact Klean Industries » GO.
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