President Johnny Kraczek explains, “The ability to take coal or wood, convert it to syngas, and then either burn the syngas in a combustion engine or generator or even convert it into diesel has been around since the 1930s. So, it seems like a logical jump that by using the same technology, one should be able to take wastepaper, green waste, and unrecyclable cardboard, also made from wood and put it in the same equipment and get the same result syngas and that we should be able to do the same things with it. Another technology developed in the 1930s and used extensively today is the ability to take syngas and convert it into diesel and kerosine/jet fuel. The truth is that yes… it can be done and does work. However, the existing plants today that convert coal to diesel in South Africa are positively huge. Downsizing this older working tech, by a full order of magnitude, into a plant that could eliminate paper and cardboard from going to landfill by creating green diesel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is actually considered technically challenging or risky. (Actually, any equipment that doesn’t have seven plus years of commercial track record is considered risky.)

We at 5E have been believers that we can take stuff going to land fill and turn it into SAF, using these 90 year old technologies ever since we took up the Grand Challenge presented by the airline industry and the Department of Energy in 2021. We have done design work, filed some patents on novel ways of doing processing and converting the waste and have begun the process of engineering and developing the first couple out of four Sun SAF plants for Utah and are starting on a few others in the US Southwest and South.

Our original plan was to procure various pieces of equipment from suppliers who have been operating these pieces commercially for many years. However, besides our engineering teams, there still seemed to be concern, especially from our banking advisors and some investor analysts, that these different pieces of equipment, all reputable and with twenty-year track records, might not work well together. “How do you know the syngas these guys produce will still make jet fuel and diesel in the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) unit that those guys produce?” Even using the explanation that it’s kind of like a light bulb. You can plug it into a socket, and it will give light regardless of whether the electricity comes from a coal-fired plant or from an industrial solar field; the light bulb still does its job. But they still seemed stressed.

However, we at 5E are very pleased to announce that our engineering team has found a company that designs, builds, and fabricates the entire process from gasifying to making jet fuel and that they have fully derisked the technology, and, if you are willing to travel to Europe, you can actually walk the plants they have built there to see the tech working for yourself. We are currently under NDA, and we are not yet providing the suppliers’ name publicly; however, our teams are very pleased with what we have seen and are reviewing their work to confirm both the economics and production numbers. If we continue to like what we see, we will pivot the Grantsville Sun to SAF facility into using this fully integrated and fully de-risked technology package. At least then our bankers and investors should be able to sleep at night!

I personally want to thank our teams for their great work and for their connections that lead to this even lower risk potential solution.”