The drive for a green aviation transition requires a substantial increase in Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) production to meet Norwegian and European targets. Norway, capitalizing on its unique energy advantages, aspires to lead the green transition in transportation and aviation. Nordic Electrofuel (NEF) has developed a revolutionary catalyst-free POX-rWGS reactor, SAFIRE, central to producing CO2-neutral jet fuel (e-SAF). NEF aims for a technology demonstration, anticipating successful testing in 2027 and rapid upscaling. With its simplicity, robustness, high CO2 conversion, low cost, and flexibility, SAFIRE positions NEF at the forefront of the green aviation revolution.
The goal of this project is to accelerate Norwegian e-fuel production by designing a scalable concept with optimal mixing for the SAFIRE reactor, thus enabling NEF to integrate reactor pilot testing in their demo plant E-Fuel1 at Herøya, and achieve rapid scale-up to a billion litres produced in 2030. The SAFIRE IPN project seeks to understand how turbulent mixing and specific chemical reactions interact in the SAFIRE reactor to improve the overall process, offer insights for scaling up the SAFIRE reactor, utilize process modeling to define the reactor's shape and flow conditions, and create a design tool to explore various SAFIRE design options, enabling efficient parametric studies, all together providing a solid foundation for designs of the SAFIRE reactor. Our new paper in 2025 uses high-resolution simulations to show that tiny traces of oxygen in the CO2 stream can dramatically speed up the reverse water–gas shift reaction which reduces the time to make CO (syngas), while too much oxygen reduces the final CO yield. We verify that several state-of-the-art chemical models agree on the key trends and that our Large-Eddy Simulations faithfully match gold-standard Direct Numerical Simulations. Most importantly, we derive a simple rule that predicts the needed residence time from the balance between chemistry and turbulent mixing which can give NEF practical support for reactor sizing and scale-up.
Nordic Electrofuel (NEF) has together with NTNU developed a breakthrough concept for production of sustainable aviation fuel based on partial oxidation (POX) with reversed water gas shift (rWGS), electrolysis and Fischer Tropsch (FT). The main invention is the SAFIRE reactor, a combination of a POX reactor and a non-catalytic rWGS reactor. The aim is to test the SAFIRE reactor in E-Fuel1 (a complete e-fuel pilot plant) at Herøya, with production start-up in 2026. The SAFIRE reactor design is patented by NEF and has received substantial interest from a number of large global companies that want to license it after completion of testing and validation in E-Fuel1. The main principle, which is based on rapid non-catalytic rWGS reaction in the gas phase, has been shown to work with very intense turbulent mixing of the hydrogen and POX gas in the rWGS section, but for practical designs the need for mixing must be reduced as much as possible to minimize pressure and energy losses. To make the optimum design, there is therefore a need for a much more complete understanding of the interaction between turbulent mixing and the endothermic reactions in the rWGS section of the SAFIRE reactor. Obtaining this understanding and providing validated simulation and design tools that can be used to optimize the design of the SAFIRE reactor is a main research goal of this project.
