esaf
PR: Phelan Green Hydrogen has announced it has licensed technologies from Johnson Matthey Catalyst Technologies (JM CT) for its planned electro sustainable aviation fuel facility in the Western Cape, South Africa.
Construction of the facility in Saldanha Bay is expected to begin by the end of 2026 and is part of the wider Phelan Green Hydrogen Project which expects investment of R47 billion (more than £2 billion).
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Start My Test Flight →The licence win represents the first phase of the project, which when completed is expected to be one of the world’s first commercial-scale eSAF production facilities, able to produce around 35,000 tonnes of eSAF each year, intended for sale into the EU/UK markets. That will be the equivalent of producing up to 6% of the EU and UK’s mandated eSAF volumes for 2030.
Once all phases are complete the facility is expected to supply around 140,000 tonnes of eSAF in total each year.
Johnson Matthey’s HyCOgen™ technology uses a catalysed process to convert CO2 and electrolytic (green) hydrogen into carbon monoxide (CO). This CO is then combined with additional hydrogen to form syngas. HyCOgen technology integrates with FT CANS™ technology, jointly developed and co-owned by JM and bp, which converts syngas into synthetic crude oil, supporting overall process efficiency. This synthetic crude oil will then be upgraded to produce synthetic paraffinic kerosene.
Alberto Giovanzana, CEO of JM CT, said: “Phelan Green’s plans for an eSAF facility in the Western Cape are a landmark project. It will be one of the world’s first commercial-scale eSAF facilities and a clear signal that SAF can scale today. It also marks Johnson Matthey’s first deployment of HyCOgen and FT CANS in Africa.”
Blair Phelan, Managing Director Phelan Green Group, said: “Securing these licence and engineering agreements with Johnson Matthey completes the technology backbone of our project. Their team’s support has been instrumental in getting us here. We are now ready to turn renewable energy, CO2 and water into sustainable aviation fuel, and to prove that eSAF can be produced at commercial scale, here in South Africa.”
Notes:
- Saldanha Bay is a small port on the South African west coast. It is the country’s principal iron ore export location, with a small role in fishing as well.
- Among South Africa’s best wind resources. Strong solar resource inland. Deep-water export port. Existing industrial infrastructure. The Western Cape government supports a dedicated green hydrogen hub.
- Production of 35,000 tonnes of eSAF is interesting.
- HyCOgen is essentially a highly efficient catalytic Reverse Water Gas Shift (RWGS) step that converts captured CO2 and green hydrogen into CO, which is then fed to the FT reactor as syngas.
- For every 14 tonnes of hydrocarbon fuel produced, 44 tonnes of CO2 are required, and 6 tonnes of H2 are required. Producing 1 kg of green hydrogen typically requires about 50–55 kWh of electricity. Where is the CO2 coming from?
- A 35,000-tonne-per-year e-SAF facility using Johnson Matthey’s HyCOgen and FT CANS technologies would require roughly 110,000 tonnes of captured CO2, 15,000 tonnes of green hydrogen, and around 800 GWh of renewable electricity annually.
- What’s interesting is that the project’s power requirement appears much larger than the 35,000 tpa fuel output would suggest. The developer has previously discussed a renewable portfolio of approximately 2.5 GW of wind and solar generation dedicated to the hydrogen project and indicated it would operate through its own power network. They even contemplated exporting excess electricity to the local grid.
- SAF is still an open question.
- The key question: Can they achieve a high enough capacity factor from renewables to run electrolysis economically? Electrolyzers hate sitting idle. A 200 MW electrolyzer running at only 30–40% utilization produces very expensive hydrogen.
The critical risk to the Saldanha e-SAF project is probably not Eskom load-shedding. The project is designed around dedicated renewable generation. The greater challenge will be financing and building the multi-gigawatt renewable portfolio needed to keep electrolyzers running at high utilization and produce e-SAF at a cost competitive with imported alternatives.
RWGS and Fischer-Tropsch are proven. Commercial-scale e-SAF integration remains relatively early. The economics of supplying reliable 24/7 renewable power at scale are what will determine whether 35,000 tonnes per year actually materialize. Investors must also weigh South Africa’s long-standing challenges with infrastructure delivery, regulatory certainty, and project execution.
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