Phelan Green has reached final investment decision (FID) for its electro-sustainable aviation fuel (e-SAF) project in Saldanha Bay, South Africa (SA). Contributors to the project include Johnson Matthey and Honeywell.
Construction is expected to begin at the start of 2027, with first exports targeted for 2029. Johnson Matthey’s HyCOgen technology will be used to convert captured CO2 and electrolytic hydrogen into syngas, with its Fischer-Tropsch (FT) CANS process will produce synthetic crude. Honeywell’s FT Unicracking technology will then turn the hydrocarbons into aviation fuel, leading to an initial output of around 35,000 tonnes of e-SAF a year.
Addressing the African Green Hydrogen Summit in Cape Town, SA, where the FID was announced, President of SA, Cyril Ramaphosa, commented: “This is an important milestone. As the World Economic Forum noted earlier this year, ‘the real bottleneck in scaling clean hydrogen is demand, not technology’. Scaling therefore rests on securing long-term offtake agreements. This project gives practical meaning to the challenge we made at last year’s summit: an investment decision has been taken, equity committed, major equipment ordered and a defined route to construction established. What follows is production and offtakers.”
