Biofuel company Gevo Inc. said it has entered an agreement with a unit of McDermott International Ltd. to provide engineering and planning services for sustainable aviation fuel facilities in North America.
Gevo plans to develop the first facility, called Net-Zero 1, near Lake Preston, South Dakota. The company expects the plant to produce up to 65 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, diesel, and renewable gasoline.
“Gevo’s Net-Zero plant design, with its focus on carbohydrates as feedstock, has been carefully chosen for its exceptional cost-effectiveness, reliability, and scalability to meet the surging demand for sustainable aviation fuel and renewable hydrocarbons,” said Chris Ryan, president and COO of Englewood, Colorado-based Gevo. “In an increasingly challenging project environment over the past years, this collaboration is designed to ensure we stay on track, manage costs, execute our NZ-1 project, and be capable of executing additional NZ projects,”
The company said its Net-Zero 1 plant could potentially produce 550 million pounds of “high-value nutritional products” annually in addition to production of SAF and other fuels. Gevo plans to use wind energy to generate electricity for the plant and said it could use renewable natural gas from captured methane emissions from livestock to supply thermal energy.
“Gevo is a premier provider in the fast-growing sustainable aviation fuel market. This agreement marks the commencement of a collaborative relationship through which we will support Gevo’s low-cost delivery and speed-to-market goals,” said Vaseem Khan, senior vice president of McDermott, an engineering and construction company headquartered in Houston. “We believe we have the experience and expertise to deliver a standardized, modularized, and repeatable design for this and Gevo’s future Net-Zero projects.”
