Tsinghua achieves world-first direct CO₂-to-SAF conversion at kiloton scale

BEIJING, August 17, 2026 — Aviation is one of the last great frontiers of decarbonization. Batteries are still too heavy for long-haul flights, and today’s “green” jet fuels rely on scarce used cooking oil and crops that compete with food supplies. Now, a team at Tsinghua University has demonstrated a fundamentally different path: making certified jet fuel directly from industrial CO₂ and green hydrogen, at the thousand-ton scale.

On August 17, 2026, the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation (CPCIF) convened an expert panel in Beijing to evaluate the “Kiloton-Scale CO₂ Hydrogenation to Sustainable Aviation Fuel” technology. The panel concluded that the achievement, led by Professor Fei Wei and Associate Professor Chenxi Zhang of the Department of Chemical Engineering, is world-first and internationally leading overall.

From Smokestack to Sky

Unlike conventional SAF routes that face hard feedstock limits, CO₂AF™ uses two inputs with no practical ceiling: captured industrial CO₂ and green hydrogen from wind and solar power. Inside a purpose-built high-pressure reactor, a uniquely designed catalyst performs in a single step what previously required complex, multi-stage refineries—rearranging CO₂ and hydrogen molecules into liquid hydrocarbons indistinguishable from conventional jet fuel.

Associate Professor Chenxi Zhang calls this “artificial photosynthesis.” Just as plants use sunlight to turn CO₂ into glucose, CO₂AF™ uses green hydrogen and advanced catalysts to turn CO₂ into liquid fuel, releasing only water. The carbon is borrowed, not mined: captured from emissions, flown across the sky, and ready to be captured again.

The Numbers That Matter

During a rigorous 72-hour continuous test at the pilot plant in Meishan, Sichuan Province, independent experts verified:

• 97.37% of the CO₂ fed into the system was converted into products
• 92.37% of the output was premium C₈⁺ aviation fuel range hydrocarbons
• 1.67% was methane byproduct—meaning nearly every carbon atom became useful fuel, not waste
• The reactor ran at 100.01% of design capacity, with internal temperatures stable within ±2.3°C

The final product met all specifications of GB 6537-2025, China’s standard for No. 3 Jet Fuel. It is a true “drop-in” fuel: zero engine modifications, zero infrastructure changes. Notably, unlike many existing SAFs that are paraffin-based, CO₂AF™ produces a full-range aromatic fuel—matching the complete molecular profile of conventional petroleum jet fuel.

Breaking the Old Limits

For decades, CO₂-to-fuel research hit three walls. Thermodynamically, CO₂ is stubbornly stable. Kinetically, pushing conversion high usually destroyed selectivity—turning precious fuel into useless methane. Economically, complex multi-step processes consumed too much energy and hydrogen.

CO₂AF™ appears to have cracked all three. By comparison, the conventional Fischer-Tropsch route is theoretically capped below 50% selectivity for aviation-range fuels. The dominant HEFA process (used cooking oil) is already bumping against global supply limits. CO₂AF™ leapfrogs both, achieving over 92% selectivity in one step from feedstocks that are, for all practical purposes, unlimited.

What the Experts Said

“This is not merely an incremental improvement—it is a fundamentally new route,” the evaluation panel wrote in its official conclusion. “By establishing a new paradigm of catalytic nano-reconstruction and solving the autonomous design and manufacturing challenges of high-pressure fluidized-bed reactors, this technology offers a Chinese solution to global aviation decarbonization.”

From Laboratory to Industry

The technology has already traveled from lab bench to industrial pilot. Since its transfer from Tsinghua University in 2022, the Sichuan plant has logged over 2,000 hours of operation. The team is now engineering a 50,000-ton commercial demonstration plant in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, designed to pair with local renewable energy for fully green hydrogen production.

Experts recommend accelerating this scale-up and integrating CO₂AF™ into international certification frameworks such as ASTM D7566 and China’s CAAC SAF standards.

The Bottom Line

As nations worldwide mandate ever-higher SAF blending quotas, the world faces a supply crunch. CO₂AF™ does not ask farmers for more crops or restaurants for more grease. It asks smokestacks for the CO₂ they were going to emit anyway.

“One day, the fuel powering your flight may have started as CO₂ from a factory smokestack,” the research team noted. “Every takeoff becomes an act of carbon recycling.”