Sora Fuel, Emerging Fuels Technology sign technology cooperation agreement

Sora Fuel, a venture-backed startup that produces sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) using only water, air and renewable energy, announced Nov. 12 that it has signed a technology cooperation agreement with Emerging Fuels Technology Inc.

The partnership aims to combine Sora’s direct air capture (DAC) pathway to SAF—specifically its reactive carbon-capture (RCC) technology—with EFT’s advanced Fischer-Tropsch synthesis and upgrading capability, enabling the production of SAF wherever ample, affordable renewable energy is available to power their processes.

The agreement also anticipates the development of new intellectual property to optimize the efficiency of both platforms and includes a cross-licensing arrangement for each company’s technology. 

“Our strategy has been and will always be to focus on what we are best at and create collaborative partnerships with best-in-class partners,” said Gareth Ross, CEO of Sora Fuel. “EFT is such a partner and we believe that the combination of our technologies will be game-changing for the SAF industry.”

Kenneth Agee, president of EFT, emphasized the strategic importance of this agreement.

“Our partnership reflects our shared commitment to developing efficient, globally scalable sustainable fuel solutions that will significantly contribute to supplying the global demand for SAF worldwide,” Agee said.

Sora Fuel offers a new path for producing SAF by capturing and using atmospheric CO2 at costs that, according to the company, are an order of magnitude lower than existing processes.

The company’s novel technology includes a liquid bicarbonate electrolyzer that converts DAC CO2, operating in a fully closed-loop system that uses only water and renewable electricity to produce syngas.

“Compared to incumbent DAC solutions, Sora Fuel’s DAC-to-fuels approach dramatically reduces overall energy inputs, eliminates the need for feedstocks (other than air and water), and provides a scalable process for efficiently and cost-effectively producing SAF and any other downstream products of syngas,” Sora Fuel stated.

EFT works closely with providers of syngas technology to combine its technology platform to make synthetic fuels from a variety of feedstocks such as natural gas, flared gas, biogas, biomass, municipal solid waste, CO2 and more.