Potential sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) producer Circularity Fuels, which has developed a process to convert an abundant feedstock—cow manure—into ASTM D7566 Annex A1 specification jet fuel, has closed its latest round of funding.
The company developed its patented Ouro reactor, a fully electrified, AI-controlled microchannel reactor that turns waste carbon into clean syngas. In June, Circularity announced the first end-to-end conversion of raw dairy biogas into jet fuel, validated over a six-month pilot test at a dairy near Madera, California.
This latest $7 million funding round aims, over the next 18 months, to bridge the gap from lab to commercial blueprint by building and running a demonstration plant. According to Circularity, this plant would produce jet fuel from biogas daily and complete the engineering design for a 75-barrel-per-day commercial SAF plant.
Crucial to that final step is lining up airline offtake agreements to spur the funding needed to construct the facility. The California-based company has raised $17 million, a fraction of the cost required.
Circularity, which claims its commercial capital costs would be roughly one-fifth those of jet fuel plants now under construction in Europe, will also begin licensing its technology to partners who wish to build their own plants.
“Every dairy already has the feedstock. What’s been missing is a way to turn it into jet fuel that makes economic sense for the farmer and the airline,” said Circularity founder and CEO Stephen Beaton. “This funding lets us run our process at demonstration scale and design our first commercial plant. And as fuel supply gets harder to count on, fuel made close to home from waste we already have is worth more than ever.”
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