[MITEI Seed] Fueling the future: pyrolytic oils from plastics and biowastes for sustainable aviation

Description

The aviation industry contributes 2% of US CO2 emissions and targets net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To achieve this goal, Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) is a key strategy. A key challenge to advancing SAF production technologies is finding feedstocks sufficient in mass (and generation rate) to meet the demand of the sector (i.e., neither biofuels nor plastic waste pyrolysis alone can meet the need of the industry). This research seeks to revolutionize SAF development by producing oils through pyrolysis of plastics and biowastes systematically, with subsequent analytical characterization of its composition to screen key components for SAF synthesis via two-dimensional gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (the gold standard of compound-specific oil fingerprinting). The core objectives include evaluating pyrolysis conditions, fingerprinting resulting pyrolytic oils, building chemical composition libraries, and developing machine-learning algorithms capable of tuning pyrolysis conditions for a dynamic input waste stream (e.g., bio versus plastic and combinations thereof).