[2026 Industry Updates] Overview of the latest progress in China’s SAF projects in 2026 — Carbon Creates Everything
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Shanghai Carbon Life Technology Co., Ltd. is an innovative enterprise dedicated to the direct synthesis of clean energy from carbon dioxide. Its core mission is to transform greenhouse gases into valuable resources through disruptive technologies. The “Air-Sourced Sustainable Aviation Fuel (Air-SAF)” technology that the company is working to develop aims to directly produce synthetic fuel that fully meets aviation standards, by capturing carbon dioxide from industrial emissions or the atmosphere and combining it with green hydrogen.
The 100-ton-scale production line for carbon-based materials is a globally leading demonstration project for the conversion of carbon dioxide into aviation fuel through hydrogenation. The technology directly captures carbon dioxide from the air and undergoes a catalytic reaction with green hydrogen produced by electrolyzing water using renewable energy. Its core technology lies in a highly efficient and selective platinum-based catalyst system developed independently, which is capable of converting carbon dioxide and hydrogen into liquid hydrocarbons containing jet fuel components in a single step under specific conditions, thereby enabling direct and precise conversion from a \"carbon source\" to an \"energy source\".
In January 2026, the Lingang R&D and Innovation Center of Shanghai Carbon Life Technology Co., Ltd. was officially inaugurated. At the inauguration ceremony, the world’s largest 100-tonne-scale air-based sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production line was officially unveiled; this system is capable of extracting carbon dioxide from the air and converting it into aviation fuel. The completion of this production line also marks a crucial step forward in the field of direct air capture and conversion of carbon dioxide, moving it from the laboratory stage to industrial-scale testing.
On April 16, 2026, Ningxia TanShengWanWu Engineering Technology Co., Ltd. released a public notice regarding the environmental impact assessment for its pilot project aimed at producing sustainable aviation fuel through the direct air carbon capture process, with a capacity of 1,000 tons. The project requires an investment of 100 million yuan, primarily for the construction of a production area, an auxiliary equipment area, an office area, and an analysis and testing area. The production area includes a Direct Air Carbon Capture (DAC) unit, a water electrolysis unit, an electrochemical CO₂ reduction unit, and a Fischer-Tropsch hydrogenation unit for producing SAF. The annual production capacity is 833.5 tons of SAF, with by-products of 208.4 tons of naphtha and 347.3 tons of diesel.