Demonstration plant for sustainable aviation fuel inaugurated at PSI
Villigen, 20.08.2026 — A look ahead to the future of flying: on August 20, the “aerobrew” demonstration plant was officially inaugurated on the campus of the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI. It is a joint project of PSI and the Zurich-based company Metafuels. Here the production of sustainable aviation fuel is being tested and prepared for commercialisation: synthetic kerosene produced in an exceptionally efficient way.
From water, renewable electricity, and carbon dioxide from sustainable sources, high-quality, climate-neutral aviation fuel is to be created. This is the goal of researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI in collaboration with the Zurich-based company Metafuels. Today, 20 August 2026, their innovative project bringing science and industry together became tangible with the inauguration of the “aerobrew” demonstration plant on the PSI campus. More than 150 guests from science, politics, industry, and the energy sector attended the inauguration ceremony, including Dieter Egli, a member of the Aargau cantonal government; Francine Zimmermann, director of the Federal Office of Civil Aviation; and Jens Fehlinger, CEO of Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS).
With the new demonstration plant, the emerging “aerobrew” technology is now being operated for the first time in an industrially relevant plant design. This is a novel catalytic process for producing synthetic aeroplane fuel – known as SAF, for sustainable aviation fuel – that PSI researchers and the Metafuels team jointly developed and patented. The project combines scientific research with industrial development in a targeted way to transform new findings into practical applications.
“At PSI, we conduct research for society. The energy transition is one of the major challenges we are currently facing,” says PSI Director Christian Rüegg. “The inauguration of the ‘aerobrew’ demonstration plant is an important milestone on the path to more sustainable aviation. We are proud that our cutting-edge research is making a crucial contribution to this step towards industrial production.”
From green methanol to sustainable fuel
“We have successfully developed ‘aerobrew’ together with Metafuels on a laboratory scale. With our demonstration plant, we are now testing the process under real-world conditions,” says Marco Ranocchiari, a researcher at the PSI Center for Energy and Environmental Sciences, who leads PSI‘s involvement in the “aerobrew” project. “This will allow us to further optimise the technology and create the conditions for industrial production.”
The new plant at PSI is designed to produce 50 litres of SAF per day. It is the world’s first facility to combine all the production steps for synthesising aviation fuel from methanol under one roof.
“International travel and global supply chains will continue to depend on air transport,” explains Saurabh Kapoor, co-founder and CEO of Metafuels. “That’s why we have developed a product that can be integrated into existing airport infrastructure and used in conventional jet engines, while at the same time significantly reducing climate-damaging emissions.” Metafuels plans to bring the first commercial plant for production of SAF using the “aerobrew” technology into operation starting in 2030.
The “aerobrew” process requires no fossil fuels and achieves higher selectivity – a better yield-to-revenue ratio – compared to previously used production methods for SAF. The source materials are water, from which hydrogen is produced using sustainable electricity, and carbon dioxide. The latter can in the short term be sourced from biogenic sources such as wood or plant waste, and in the long term directly from the atmosphere. Hydrogen and carbon dioxide are processed into green methanol. Finally, the “aerobrew” technology comes into play: it generates sustainable kerosene from the green methanol.
Panel discussion, inauguration ceremony and site visit
The inauguration event on the afternoon of August 20 began with a formal welcome by Christian Rüegg, Dieter Egli, and Saurabh Kapoor. This was followed by a presentation on the project by Marco Ranocchiari and Matthias Schnellmann, Vice President Commercial at Metafuels. A live interview with Jens Fehlinger and a talk by Francine Zimmermann offered insights into the future of sustainable flying.
The festive inauguration ceremony that followed took place directly at the “aerobrew” facility on PSI’s East Campus: a kerosene-powered model helicopter delivered, in a small basket, the scissors that were used to symbolically cut the red ribbon.
Finally, guests had the opportunity to tour the facility and gain an insight into the pioneering “aerobrew” technology.
Text: Paul Scherrer Institute PSI/Laura Hennemann
About PSI
The Paul Scherrer Institute PSI develops, builds and operates large, complex research facilities and makes them available to the national and international research community. The institute's own key research priorities are in the fields of future technologies, energy and climate, health innovation and fundamentals of nature. PSI is committed to the training of future generations. Therefore about one quarter of our staff are post-docs, post-graduates or apprentices. Altogether PSI employs 2300 people, thus being the largest research institute in Switzerland. The annual budget amounts to approximately CHF 450 million. PSI is part of the ETH Domain, with the other members being the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, ETH Zurich and EPFL Lausanne, as well as Eawag (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology), Empa (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology) and WSL (Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research).
Contact
Dr. Marco Ranocchiari
PSI Center for Energy and Environmental Sciences
Paul Scherrer Institute PSI
+41 56 310 58 43
marco.ranocchiari@psi.ch
[German, English, Italian]
Saurabh Kapoor
Metafuels
saurabh.kapoor@metafuels.ch
[German, English]
Harry Ashcroft
Manager communications activities for Metafuels
Perseid PR
harry@perseidpr.com
[English]