Aether Fuels Inc. has produced synthetic aviation fuel meeting ASTM D7566 specifications on a fully integrated 2.5 barrel-per-day demonstration line, a step towards commercial-scale SAF supply. The Aether Fuels ASTM D7566 result is a technical proof point rather than a supply contract, but it marks progress on the certification path airports will eventually buy against.
The company says the milestone, announced on 29 September 2026, is the first time a North American producer has made ASTM-specification synthetic aviation fuel from mass-balanced renewable natural gas and captured industrial CO2 at this scale. The line combined Aether’s Aurora Tri-Converter and Aurora Upgrader units with an existing Fischer-Tropsch reactor at RTI in North Carolina, using landfill gas from Kentucky as feedstock. Independent testing by AmSpec confirmed the fuel met the FT-SPK annex of the ASTM standard, meaning it can be blended with conventional kerosene up to 50% without modification to aircraft tanks, pipelines or airport fuelling systems.
For airports tracking SAF supply volumes against blending targets, the relevance is in scale-up risk rather than volume: 2.5 barrels a day is a technical proof point, not a fuelling contract. Aether’s next step is Project Beacon, a planned 2,000-tonne-a-year (50 barrel-per-day) plant in Singapore using industrial waste and biomethane, targeting lifecycle greenhouse gas reductions of over 70% against fossil jet fuel.
Dhaval Shah, Chief Technology Officer of Aether Fuels, said the demonstration “is the culmination of over a year of hard work by Aether’s R&D team and is a tremendous milestone,” adding that “the data from this demonstration informs and de-risks the design of our 50 BPD Project Beacon plant in Singapore.”
Conor Madigan, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, said: “We started by systematically demonstrating each part of the Aurora platform at the pilot scale, then scaled our novel technology up more than 50X in standalone demo units, and in this most recent demonstration, brought these demo units together in an integrated line that produces ASTM spec jet fuel.”
Aether has raised more than £45m to date and holds memorandums of understanding with Singapore Airlines, JetBlue and FlyORO. The company’s progress sits alongside wider fuel policy moves airports are watching, including the UK’s rejection of duty on US HVO biodiesel imports and continued growth in renewable fuel financing tracked in Airport Business Magazine’s coverage of airport energy investment.
For fuel procurement teams, the takeaway is to treat this as a pipeline signal rather than a supply option: watch Project Beacon’s construction timeline in Singapore before assuming volumes for offtake agreements. The ASTM D7566 detail matters operationally, since fuel meeting the FT-SPK annex requires no new certification and can be blended without infrastructure changes, which shortens the runway between a plant coming online and fuel reaching an airport’s tanks.
