The University of Sheffield has developed a new way of making sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) using solar energy and believes it could be scaled to industrial levels.
On March 30, 2026, the UK-based university said that an international team of engineers has been researching techniques which could reduce the reliance on used cooking oil to produce SAF.
The new process captures CO2 from the air, combines it with hydrogen and then heats it using concentrated solar energy to produce the fuel.
In a study published in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers used computer modelling and simulation to understand how and where the technology could function at an industrial scale.
While modern commercial aircraft have been manufactured to partly use SAF, the infrastructure to produce the green fuel on industrial levels is still not there.
Professor Meihong Wang, Professor of Energy Systems at the University of Sheffield, who led the research, said that a “major challenge in switching to SAF is ensuring that we have enough feedstock to produce the fuel” and in a way that doesn’t require fossil fuels.
“The process we have proposed has the potential to address key challenges in scaling up SAF. It’s a renewable energy-powered way of capturing CO2 from air and making SAF that is cost-effective and can be scaled to industrial levels. It also reduces electricity consumption in the production process and can fit within a circular economy,” said Professor Wang.
The solar-driven SAF technique was developed in collaboration with researchers from the East China University of Science and Technology.
According to the researchers, it improves an existing proposed way of making SAF called Direct Air Capture and CO2 Utilization (DACCU), which is currently in the research and development phase.
The researchers from Sheffield and China have shown in their study that replacing the fossil fuel with concreted solar energy is capable of providing the intense heat needed to create the chemical reactions to produce SAF.
It could also cost less than existing DACCU pathways – projections estimate $4.62 per kg compared to $ 5.6 per kg.
Countries that could be suitable for solar energy SAF production
The team’s analysis suggests that five countries across different continents could be suitable for such large-scale SAF production plants, due to their high levels of sunlight and low costs of hydrogen or land.
These are: the USA (North America), Chile (South America), Spain (Europe), South Africa (Africa) and China (Asia).
The paper, ‘Solar-driven direct air capture to produce sustainable aviation fuel’, is published in Nature Communications.
