Illinois positioned to be center of sustainable aviation fuel industry

LISLE, Ill. — Ethanol can be used for many things in addition to fuel.

“Ethanol is a molecule, not a fuel,” said Jennifer Aurandt-Pilgrim, vice president of research and development and innovation at Marquis Management Inc. “We can use it as a fuel, but we can also use it as a feedstock or we can convert it to ethylene and make 3,000 different products.”

All those products can be made with ethanol that is carbon negative, said Aurandt-Pilgrim during a presentation at the Leading the Way: Sustainable Aviation Fuel in Illinois conference hosted by the Illinois Corn Growers Association, the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association and Intersect Illinois.

“Our goal is to foster discussion and understand what this industry might mean to all of us,” said Chris Gould, owner of Gould Farms and a pilot for FedEx Express. “I hope when we all leave here that we’re confident Illinois should be at the center of this industry.”

“For every molecule of ethanol you make, you’re taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere,” Aurandt-Pilgrim said. “We can turn ethanol into sustainable aviation fuel or renewable diesel to decarbonize rail or marine.”

“We can also sequester that carbon in the ethanol in plastics and chemicals that can be used in anything from Lululemon leggings to housewares and in the future we will make products from carbon dioxide,” the company vice president said.

“Agricultural practices such as efficient fertilizer, tillage practices or cover crops all can be counted as ways to reduce the carbon intensity of our feedstock,” she said. “If we get the life cycle assessment right, the disparity between production costs and the value of corn can be returned to the farmer with sustainable agricultural practices.”

Marquis has an International Sustainability and Carbon Certification system, which allows the company to sell low carbon gallons of ethanol into the international market.

“Marquis produces 400 million gallons of ethanol per year at Hennepin and we’re able to sell to 31 countries on six continents,” Aurandt-Pilgrim said. “Those countries have different regulatory systems so our team does life cycle assessments for those countries to understand the value of the carbon intensity of our ethanol.”

The Illinois company is making investments in several projects.

“In 2024, we will have carbon capture sequestration and we will capture 1.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and sequester it below ground never to come to the surface again,” Aurandt-Pilgrim said.

“We can sequester up to 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide we just need permitting from the EPA to inject it underground,” she said. “Our permit has been with EPA for over two years so we’re hoping that they get the permit to us by the end of the year.”

In 2026, Marquis plans to have a soy crush facility with a capacity to crush 6,000 tons of soy per day.

“We can make carbon neutral if not carbon negative sustainable aviation fuel in Illinois and ship it up the Illinois River and decarbonize O’Hare,” Aurandt-Pilgrim said. “We’ll be able to make 120 million gallons per year of sustainable aviation fuel with 200 million gallons of ethanol, leaving another 200 million gallons of ethanol a year to feed other markets.”

Agriculture is about carbon abatement, providing food and growing the economy, said Nancy Young, carbon sustainability officer for Gevo.

“Agriculture is one of the best ways of grabbing carbon out of the air and sequestering it,” Young said.

“Gevo is a carbon abatement company and we like to work with farmers,” she said.

The company started with an ethanol facility in Minnesota several years ago to test how to make jet fuel out of ethanol.

“We also started a renewable natural gas facility with dairies,” Young said.

“Our first commercial facility — Net Zero 1 is in South Dakota and we want to do Net Zero 2, 3, 4 and 5,” the carbon sustainability officer said.

“At this integrated facility we will make ethanol and turn it into jet fuel,” she said. “It relies on our growers program where we work with farmers across the Midwest to incentivize what they’re already doing and build on that with additional practices to improve the soil quality and also do carbon sequestration.”

In addition, Gevo is adding wind energy to provide electricity off the grid and also provides a mechanism to produce hydrogen.

“One important thing that gets lost a lot of times is food,” Young said. “We produce nutritional products so the sustainable aviation fuel will be a lot less costly because we’re selling protein into the market.”

“We want to decarbonize the whole supply chain by starting at the field and bringing it all the way to the aircraft,” she said. “But part of the challenge is the policies are different.”

The Argonne GREET model captures the elements of what farmers do to bring biomass products to fuels and into aircrafts, Young said.

“This is a model with modules so you can bring into it things like indirect land use changes,” she said.

The Gevo growers program has three tiers, with different payment amounts. Farmers are paid for various practices such as reduced tillage, nutrient management strategies, planting cover crops and utilizing manure applications.

“This will mean nothing if we don’t track it all so we created Verity tracking,” Young said. “It tracks not only the carbon across the supply chain, but also the sustainability attributes so at the end of the day you know what you’ve got.”