In 2021, NREL fermented food waste into volatile fatty acids and catalytically upgraded them to jet fuel; the SAF was estimated to cut net carbon emissions by up to 165% when landfill disposal was assumed

For years, airlines have been looking for an alternative fuel that could replace kerosene without requiring airports to overhaul their infrastructure. In a 2022 study titled 'Toward Net-Zero Sustainable Aviation Fuel with Wet Waste-Derived Volatile Fatty Acids,' published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a group of scientists led by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) gave an unexpected answer: garbage. By fermenting food waste and then converting the resulting molecules into jet fuel through catalysis, the researchers produced a fuel that, under certain assumptions, was estimated to cut life-cycle carbon emissions by as much as 165% compared with conventional jet fuel.

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