ARC Bio has demonstrated that forestry waste can be converted into a feedstock for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), potentially providing a lower-carbon jet fuel source that can be made using existing refinery infrastructure, the Port-Cartier, Que.-based company said.

On Wednesday, ARC Bio announced the results of a pilot project in which bio-oil produced from Quebec forest residues through pyrolysis was converted into biocrude. The biocrude was shipped to Texas, where it was subject to fluid catalytic cracking in a facility simulating commercial refinery operations.

The resulting fuel met key requirements for blending into a SAF mix made from fats, oils and greases, fulfilling the project's goal. SAF is considered necessary to decarbonize the aviation industry, as most of its greenhouse gas emissions stem from fuel consumption.

“We have achieved the quality that we wanted to tackle,” Julien Lampron, director of ARC Bio, said in an interview with Sustainable Biz Canada about the pilot project.

ARC Bio was founded in 2024 as a joint venture between an affiliate of Quebec-based biofuel firm Bioénergie AE Cote-Nord Canada Inc. and Colorado-based Alder Renewables. The company is supported with $10 million from Boeing.

Bioénergie operates a fast pyrolysis facility in Port-Cartier, which has the capacity to output 40 million litres of bio-oil per year. Alder developed the technology which converts bio-oil into biocrude that can be refined into low-carbon fuels. ARC Bio has a blueprint to commercially produce SAF across Canada using the expertise of both companies.

Supporting Canada’s forestry sector

For the pilot, a facility in San Antonio, Texas, operated for more than 1,000 hours, producing one barrel of SAF feedstock per day.

The refined biocrude is expected to result in SAF that has significantly less greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional jet fuel or SAF derived from vegetable oils, Lampron said.

ARC Bio’s process uses common refinery operations and supports the Canadian lumber industry, the company said. It is being pitched as a potential fix to the woes of Canada’s forestry industry, which has been seeing declining demand for hardwood lumber over the years and is heavily impacted by a trade war with the U.S.

As forestry businesses look to diversify their product mix, ARC Bio could provide a market for their wood residues such as sawdust and wood chips, Lampron said. Additionally, it could output SAF that does not tap into food supplies unlike many sources of biofuels.

The next stage for ARC Bio is to generate more data to support larger-scale trials. One of the aims is to have a commercial-sized unit in Port-Cartier that can produce millions of litres of biocrude per year.

Cost-competitive SAF

The phase would involve building a refinery co-located on a Bioénergie pyrolysis site, Lampron said, producing enhanced biocrude for the Canadian market.

Approximately 20 million litres of refined biocrude could be produced per year in Port-Cartier, Lampron said, potentially serving the aviation and marine industries with sustainable, low-carbon fuels. Depending on the type of upgrading infrastructure, the refinery could support the production of five to 15 million litres of neat SAF per year, along with other transport fuels. 

The goal is to “create something at a price that we will be able to replace,” Lampron said, referring to the potential for ARC Bio’s fuel to compete with conventional jet fuel or SAF made from vegetable oils.

SAF costs between two to five times as much as jet fuel made from fossil fuels, the World Economic Forum said in 2024, presenting an obstacle to its mass adoption unless it is reduced.

Ultimately, ARC Bio wants to “implement other pyrolysis plants all across Canada” that use forestry residues, Lampron said. A near-term goal is to have a production capacity of 120 million litres of bio-oils by 2030. This represents potential neat SAF production between 20 and 50 million litres per year, he explained.

ARC Bio is in the process of selecting potential project sites close to downstream markets, Lampron added, such as in Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick.