Fifteen airline companies from Canada, Germany, Mexico and the USA signed non-binding memorandums of understanding (MOUs) in December to buy the entire output of two US renewable jet fuel producers aiming to use coal and camelina as feedstocks, reports Biofuels Digest.

AltAir Fuels LLC is aiming to produce 285M litres/year of biofuels from camelina or similar feedstocks in Washington state; and Rentech envisages 945M litres/year from coal or petroleum coke at its site near Natchez, adjacent to the Mississippi River.

Air Canada, American Airlines, Atlas Air, Delta Air Lines, FedEx Express, JetBlue Airways, Lufthansa Airlines, Mesicana Airlines, Polar Air Cargo, United Airlines, UPS Airlines and US Airways had signed agreements with both producers, the report said. Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines have signed with AltAir, and AirTran Airways with Rentech.

AltAir will convert camelina into renewable jet fuel and diesel at a new 100M gallons/year facility, with refining technology supplied by UOP, a Honeywell company. The projected start-up date is 2012 and the camelina oil will be sourced from Montana-based Sustainable Oils. The renewable fuel will be blended at the existing Tesoro oil refinery in Anacortes, Washington, where the new plant will be sited; and piped through existing pipelines to Seattle-Tacoma airport and other locations.

In Mississippi, Rentech will use technology based on the Fischer-Tropsch process to produce synthetic fuels and chemicals and over 120 megawatts of power from fossil feedstocks, with possible integration of renewable feedstocks processed with Rentech’s biomass gasification technologies.

Qatar Airways, Qatar Science and Technology, Qatar Petroleum and Airbus announced in January that they had set up Qatar Advanced Biofuel Platform to produced an engineering and implementation plan to produce economically viable and sustainable biofuel. Qatar Airways conducted the world’s first commercial flight powered by a gas-to-liquid fuel blend last October.

In Brazil, Embraer and General Electric announced in November that they would carry out a test flight operated by Azul Linhas Aereas in 2012 using renewable jet fuel produced by Amyris Biotechnologies from sugarcane.