Company: OXCCU
Founder: Jane Jin
Website: https://www.oxccu.com/
About OXCCU
OXCCU was launched to address the escalating impact of greenhouse gas emissions. We combine CO2 with H2 from water and renewable electricity, producing lower carbon and eventually circular fuels, chemicals, and biodegradable plastics. OXEFUEL is our Carbon-Neutral aviation fuel made directly from electrified CO2. The company was spun out of the University of Oxford in 2021.
At OXCCU, one of the key problems we are addressing is the increasing demand for aviation fuel in our modern, industrialised world, coupled with the need to meet the requirements of a net zero world. Despite the growing prevalence of renewable energy, fossil fuels still accounted for 82% of the 604 EJ of primary energy the world needed in 2022. To limit the impact of greenhouse gas emissions, we must transition to zero-emission sources within just 30 years.
Our mission is to enable future generations to utilise hydrocarbon fuels without their climate impact. OXCCU uses catalysts with remarkable efficiency and selectivity to convert CO2 and H2 into long-chain hydrocarbons through a one-step catalytic conversion.
By utilising CO2 as a feedstock alongside green hydrogen from renewable energy sources, OXCCU creates e-fuels, otherwise known as Power-to-Liquids (PtL), that have the potential for scale with minimal impact on land use.
With theoretically unlimited feedstocks of CO2 and H2, PtL technology has the potential to revolutionise the SAF market, providing a scalable alternative that addresses the feedstock and environmental setbacks of biofuels.
The key to scaling SAF is cost, and this is where new technologies play a crucial role. OXCCU’s technology, a unique one-step catalytic conversion process, significantly reduces both capital and operational costs. Independent research from Imperial College London has validated our approach, showing a 50% lower capital cost, and reduced operational costs due to higher selectivity yield in the jet fuel range.
At OXCCU, the core challenge we overcame was transitioning our technology from the lab to industrial-scale. To do this we needed to both bring in external resources and hire the right expertise, and during challenging economic conditions.
Despite hurdles, we successfully secured £18m funding in 2023, with Aramco, United Airlines, Eni, Trafigura and others amidst one of the toughest periods for fundraising in recent years, and we’ve built a team of genuine experts in this field, passionate about solving this challenge. What both our investors and our team shares is the mission, to enable future generations to fly without the climate impact. This extends beyond work and allows us to create a cohesive company identity.
In addition we recently secured a £2.8 million government grant to accelerate our scale up. With these investments and this team, we will continue to scale our plants and build our aviation customer base. While the amount of CO2 we’ve saved thus far may be small in relative terms, the key point is our technology holds immense potential to mitigate millions of tonnes of CO2 emissions from entering the atmosphere in the future, and it will enable future generations to fly.
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