Designfax weekly eMagazine

Subscribe Today!

Archives

View Archives

Partners

Manufacturing Center
Product Spotlight

Modern Applications News
Metalworking Ideas For
Today's Job Shops

Tooling and Production
Strategies for large
metalworking plants

World first: Factory converts waste plastic to aviation fuel

This sustainable aviation fuel was created from unrecyclable plastic waste. [Credit: Photo courtesy of Clean Planet Technologies]

 

 

A major breakthrough in tackling both waste plastic and aviation emissions has been reached with the opening of the world's first waste plastics-to-sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) pilot facility. The unique operation is located in England.

Dedicated to converting hard-to-recycle waste plastics into SAF, the new Sustainability Innovation Center is based at Discovery Park in Sandwich, Kent, and is operated by Clean Planet Technologies. The facility is set up to research and develop new technologies to deal with non-recyclable plastic waste, beginning with conversion into jet fuel.

The UK alone creates 5 million tons of waste plastics each year, 80% of which cannot be recycled, such as plastic bags and food packaging film. Globally, the world's commercial aircraft consume between 7 and 8 million barrels of jet fuel per day, equivalent to 7 to 8% of total global daily oil demand.

The pilot facility plays a critical role in bridging innovation and commercial development, integrating several stages into one single, controlled system optimized to transform hard-to-recycle plastics into SAF. It has been designed to support fuel and feedstock testing, validation, and progression through the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) qualification process, with financial support already in place from the Department for Transport-funded UK SAF Clearing House.

A section of Clean Planet's Sustainability Innovation Centre pilot facility. [Credit: Photo courtesy of Clean Planet Technologies]

 

 

"Our process first heats the waste plastic with a chemical reaction to turn it into a liquid, rather than burning it. This is then treated with our patented process to remove impurities and create SAF that meets stringent commercial aviation specifications," said Dr. Andrew Odjo, CEO at Clean Planet Technologies.

"Our pilot facility will demonstrate this waste can be turned into a premium product with a quantifiable commercial demand, as well as reducing the lifecycle carbon footprint of the aviation industry," he said. "We monitor how much energy the process uses, and overall, it cuts the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions by more than 70% compared to traditional fossil jet fuel.

"With currently less than 1% of global aviation fuel produced from sustainable sources, the scale of the environmental opportunity presented by our technology means the opening of our facility is an important step towards the UK's ambition to support sustainable aviation."

CEO Dr. Andrew Odjo (left) gives a tour of the technology and oils to a selection of invited guests at the facility's opening. [Credit: Photo courtesy of Clean Planet Technologies]

 

 

The facility is a big step forward in helping the UK to meet its SAF mandate: UK government policy to decarbonize aviation fuel states that 2% of UK jet fuel demand must be SAF, increasing to 10% in 2030 and 22% in 2040.

The key steps of the process are:

• Shredding: Waste plastics are pre-processed and shredded to a uniform size.
• Pyrolysis: The material is fed into one of the center's two pyrolysis units, with the largest capable of processing up to 1 ton of plastic per day. In this oxygen-free environment, the plastics are thermocatalytically converted into a synthetic crude oil. This melts the plastic, rather than burning it.
• Purification: Impurities and contaminants in the synthetic crude oil are removed.
• Distillation: The pyrolysis oil is transferred to a distillation unit, where it is separated into relevant fractions and optimized for upgrading into higher-value fuels.
• Upgrading: The fractions are then processed through Clean Planet Technologies' patented hydroprocessing system, which uses hydrogen to further remove impurities and transform the properties of the product to meet stringent SAF specifications.
• SAF product: The resulting ultra-clean, ultra-low-sulphur fuel suitable for aviation use is sent for testing, blending, and evaluation as part of the ASTM qualification pathway as SAF.

The fundamentals of the process (pyrolysis, purification, distillation, and hydroprocessing) are all technologies that are currently used independently at commercial scale, meaning scaling up the process is not a challenge. Clean Planet Technologies holds two patents for the upgrading of waste plastics to ultra-clean, ultra-low-sulphur high-premium hydroprocessed oils and fuels. Other organizations around the world are looking to work toward this goal, but research conducted in January 2026 shows the Sandwich facility is currently the only SAF pilot facility operating on the planet.

VIDEO: From waste plastics to sustainable aviation fuel. [Credit: Clean Planet Group]

"Our pilot facility addresses two strategic challenges simultaneously: plastic waste management and aviation decarbonization," said Bertie Stephens, CEO, Clean Planet Technologies. "By converting non-recyclable plastics -- materials that would otherwise have gone to landfill or been incinerated -- into low-carbon aviation fuel, the facility supports both circular economy objectives and the reduction of lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions."

Source: Clean Planet Technologies

Published June 2026

Rate this article